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Paes drawn to meet qualifier in first round

Shailesh Soni

Leander Paes will be the lone Indian challenge in the men's singles at Wimbledon this year.

Mahesh Bhupathi, who had qualified for the tournament proper the last two years, winning three matches each time, lost in the second round of the qualifier to Jeff Coetzee of South Africa, 6-4, 6-4.

Nirupama Vaidyanathan, the lone Indian woman attempting to make it to Wimbledon, also lost in the first round of the women's qualifying tournament at Roehampton. She was beaten by Nadejda Petrova, 6-4, 6-4.

In the draw for Wimbledon, announced yesterday, Paes was drawn to meet a qualifier (yet to be decided) in the first round.

Paes has a good chance of scoring his first Wimbledon win, but will run into 13th seed Karol Kucera in the second round. He is placed in the top half of the draw with 13th seed Kucera and third seed Yevgeny Kafelnikov.

Other potential players to watch will be Magnus Larsson of Sweden and Cedric Pioline of France. Actually, this part of the draw is rather "weak" with just one unseeded top 50 player, and three qualifiers.

The draw for Leander upto the quarter-final is:

3  Yevgeny Kafelnikov vs Magnus Larsson } __
   Guillaume Raoux vs Qualifier    ---- }    \ __
   Martin Damm vs Cedric Pioline   ---- } __ /    \
   Arnaud Clement vs Albert Portas ---- }          \ _ QF
   Daniel Vacek vs Bohdan Ulihrach ---- } __       /
   Gianluca Pozzi vs Vladimir Voltchkov }    \ __ /
   Leander Paes vs Qualifier ---------- } __ /
13 Karol Kucera vs Qualifier ---------- }