By IANS,
New Delhi: Top seed Vishnu Vardhan will lead the Indian challenge in the first of the three back-to-back $10,000 International Tennis Federation (ITF) tournaments that begins at the DLTA complex here Monday.
Vishnu, ranked 451, had won his maiden ITF title here last month. The 22-year-old from Andhra Pradesh was recently in Brazil where he failed to qualify for the main draw of the two Challenger events. He opens against compatriot P.C. Vignesh Monday.
Apart from Vishnu, there are three Indians who have been seeded in the tournament. Rohan Gajjar, the 25-year-old from Maharashtra who lost to Vishnu in the final, is the fourth seed while Ranjeet Virali-Murugesan and Rupesh Roy are sixth and seventh seeds.
The draw also have a significant participation of foreign players including five Britons. Young-Jun Kim of South Korea is the second seed while Chris Eaton of Britain is seeded third.
The recent showers have made the weather a bit pleasant but can play a spoil-sport as it did in last week’s women’s ITF tournament.
Six qualifying matches of the men’s tournament had to abandoned Sunday due to persistent rains and will now be played Monday morning.
India’s Ronak Manuja, S. Narayanaswamy, J. Nedunchezhiyan and Vivek Shokeen have been given the wildcards.