DAVANAGERE: Ramkumar Ramanathan, who grabbed the Dharwad Men’s World Tennis Tour title on Sunday, would be keen to sustain his winning ways as he contends in the ITF Davanagere Men’s World Tennis Tour, the main round of which begins at the District Tennis Association Davanagere courts here from Tuesday.
Irrespective of Ramkumar’s win, the 28-year-old begins the tournament with the tag of ‘unseeded’ player. Nick Chappell of the USA has been given the top billing in a strong field that will compete for a total prize purse of US $15,000. Bogdan Bobrov is seeded second while Digvijay Pratap Singh is the highest-seeded Indian at No.3.
Florent Bax of France is seeded fourth while Sidharth Rawat is seeded fifth. S D Prajwal Dev, Rishab Agarwal and Niki Poonacha bring up the rear of the top eight seeds, respectively.
Manish Ganesh, Suraj Prabodh, Ranjeet Virali-Murugesan and Ajay Malik were handed the wildcards for the main draw. The winner of the singles title will earn $2,160 and 15 ATP points while the runner-up will be richer by $1,272 and eight ATP points.
Meanwhile, eight qualifiers made it to the main draw including the top seed Atharva Sharma, who registered a 7-6 (5), 6-3 win over Matthew Woerndle of Australia. Unseeded Adil Kalyanpur caused a flutter when he overcame third-seeded Chirag Duhan 6-7 (3), 6-1, 15-13 in a battle that lasted for more than two hours. In another interesting duel, Tushar Madan scored a 3-6, 7-6 (10), 11-9 victory over seventh seed 7-Shivank Bhatnagar in 1 hour 56 minutes.
The Seedings: 1-Nick Chappel (USA); 2-Bogdan Bobrov; 3-Digvijay Pratap Singh; 4-Florent Bax (France); 5-Sidharth Rawat; 6-SD Prajwal Dev; 7-Rishab Agarwal; 8-Niki Kaliyanda Poonacha.
Results
Qualifying Round-2 (Seeds in parenthesis, Country except India mentioned in brackets)
1-Atharva Sharma beat 11-Matthew Woerndle 7-6 (5), 6-3; 2-Raghav Jaisinghani beat 10-Jagmeet Singh 6-3, 6-3; WC-Adil Kalyanpur beat 3-Chirag Duhan 6-7 (3), 6-1, 15-13; 5-Kabir Hans beat 13-Parth Aggarwal 6-2, 6-2; 6-Madhwin Kamath beat 9-Sandesh Dattatray Kurale 6-3, 6-1; 16-Tushar Madan beat 7-Shivank Bhatnagar 3-6, 7-6 (10), 11-9; 8-Rohan Mehra beat 15-Arjun Mahadevan 6-3, 6-4; 4-Sai Karteek Reddy Ganta beat 12-Yash Chaurasia 7-6 (8), 6-3. (ANI)