Sridhar, Sipaeya lose
in first round

Vinod Sridhar failed to captalise on the chance which he got after top seed Roberto Alvarez of Argentina failed to turn up, and went down to Nitin Kirtane in straight sets in the first round of $10,000 ITF Futures tournament in Delhi on Monday.

In the doubles, the first three seeded pairs made their exit in the opening round itself.

As Roberto Alvarez did not present himself before the organisers before the start of the tournament, as per the rules, Sridhar, the first 'lucky loser' replaced him. However, he was unable to rise to the occasion and lost to Kirtane 3-6, 6-7.

Another Indian to fall by the wayside was former national champion Sunil Kumar Sipaeya of Chandigarh, who got entry as a wild card.

Sunil, 1002 in the world rankings, found Uzbekistan's Dmitri Mazur to hot to handle. The Uzbek, ranked 546, outclassed him 6-3, 6-0.

Second seed Lee Childs of Britain battled it out against Isreal's Tomer Suissa before emerging winner at 6-4, 7-6.

China's Ti Chen lost the first set but staged a fine rally to oust Alexander Jakupovic of Greece 4-6, 6-4, 6-3 to move into the second round.

In the doubles, there were upsets galore, with the top seed Pair of Jonathan Marray and David Sherwood (Britain) being shown the door by the Chinese duo of Yu Wang and Ben-Qiang Zhu.

The top seeds lost the first set but fought back to draw parity, winning the second in the tie-breaker. But the heat took its toll as the British pair wilted in the crucial decider, failing to earn a single point. The Chinese raced to victory 5-7, 7-6(8), 6-0.

The Indian pair of Prahlad Srinath and Vishal Uppal accounted for second seeds Anton Kokurin (Uzb) and Alexander Siranov (Russia) 7-5, 6-1.

M. Deri and Elran Dooyev (Isreal) took care of third seeds Marian Leysek (Svk) and Josef Nesticky (Cze), winning 6-3, 6-3.

However, the Indian pair of Rohan Bopanna and Vinay Kannan, seeded fourth, survived to make it to the next round. They accounted for Nitin Kirtane and Sunil Kumar 7-6(5), 6-2 in an all-India affair.

Another Indian pair, Ashutosh Singh and Gurmehar Singh made it to the next round, defeating Benjamin Ballcret (France)/Christophe Bosio (Mon) 6-3, 7-6(5).

In other matches, Alexnader Jakupovic (Greece)/D.Mazur (Uzb) beat Ran Xu/Shan Xuan Zeng (China) 6-2, 6-1 while S.Ratiwatana/Sonchat Ratiwatana (Thailand) beat V.Laad/Manoj Mahadevan (India) 6-2,.6-1.