Davanagere: Ramkumar Ramanathan, who grabbed the Dharwad Men’s World Tennis Tour title on Sunday, would be keen to sustain his winning ways when he steps onto the court in the ITF Davanagere Men’s World Tennis Tour, the main draw of which begins here on Tuesday.
Irrespective of Ramkumar’s win, the 28-year-old starts the tournament as an 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 $15,000. Bogdan Bobrov is seeded second while Digvijay Pratap Singh is the highest-seeded Indian at No.3. Florent Bax of France is seeded fourth while Sidharth Rawat is seeded fifth. SD Prajwal Dev, Rishab Agarwal and Niki Poonacha bring up the rear of the top eight seeds respectively.
The winner of the singles title will earn US$ 2160 and 15 ATP points while the runner-up will be richer by US $ 1272 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 (FRA); 5-Sidharth Rawat; 6-SD Prajwal Dev; 7-Rishab Agarwal; 8-Niki Kaliyanda Poonacha.
Results:
Qualifying Round-2 (Seeds in parenthesis, Indians except mentioned)
1-Atharva Sharma bt 11-Matthew Woerndle (AUS) 7-6 (5), 6-3; 2-Raghav Jaisinghani bt 10-Jagmeet Singh 6-3, 6-3; WC-Adil Kalyanpur bt 3-Chirag Duhan 6-7 (3), 6-1, 15-13; 5-Kabir Hans bt 13-Parth Aggarwal 6-2, 6-2; 6-Madhwin Kamath bt 9-Sandesh Dattatray Kurale 6-3, 6-1; 16-Tushar Madan bt 7-Shivank Bhatnagar 3-6, 7-6(10), 11-9; 8-Rohan Mehra bt 15-Arjun Mahadevan 6-3, 6-4; 4-Sai Karteek Reddy Ganta bt 12-Yash Chaurasia 7-6 (8), 6-3.
–IANS