Dharwad: The first round of the singles in the Dharwad Men’s World Tennis Tour witnessed some long matches as all the seeded players breezed through to the pre-quarterfinals of USD 25,000 event, here on Wednesday.
Top seed Nick Chappell of USA overcame Korean Woobin Shin in straight sets 6-3, 6-3 while second seed Bogdan Bobrov quelled the challenge of qualifier Abhinav Sanjeev Shanmugam 6-2, 6-4.
Sixth seed Florent Bax of Frace, who had won the last leg of the ITF 15K in Ahmedabad three days, was leading 6-2, 2-0 (2nd set) when his opponent Stijn Pel from Netherlands threw in the towel.
Fourth seed Ramkumar Ramanathan showed some stiff resistance from qualifier Faisal Qamar before prevailing 7-6 (3), 6-2.
Meanwhile, qualifiers Madhwin Kamath and Suraj Prabodh continued their dream run winning their opening round matches.
While Madhwin was a 6-3, 6-4 winner over wild card entrant Manish Ganesh, Suraj played out the longest match of the day in outplaying another wild card Raghav Jaisinghani 6-4, 6-4 in two hours and 20 minutes.
–IANS