Second seed Eun-ha Kim bites
the dust

Second seed Eun-Ha Kim of Korea, and Manisha Malhotra and Sheetal Goutham of India crashed out as top seed Angelkha Bachmann of Germany was made to fight hard to advance into the second round of the US $25,000 ITF women's tennis tournament in Delhi on Tuesday.

Sonal Phadke became the second Indian to make it to the next round following national champion Rushmi Chakravarthi's victory over the highly-rated Helen Crook of Britain in the first round on Monday. Phadke, ranked 646, overpowered Croatia's Tihana Pochobradsky, ranked 716, 6-4, 6-4.

Unseeded Dominika Luzarova (Czech Republic) surprised Eun Ma Kim in straight sets 6-4, 6-2.

Korea's Ja Choi routed Goutham 6-2, 6-1 while Malhotra put up a good fight before going down to Russia's Ekatenna Kozhokina 6-4, 1-6, 6-3.

Top seed Bachmann warded off a stiff challenge to beat the US-based Sunitha Rao. Bachmann lost the first set but staged a fine rally to win 5-7, 6-3, 6-4.

In other first round matches, Shuai Peng (China) bt Annabel Blow (Britain) 6-1, 6-2; Urska Vesenjak (Slovakia) bt Jing Jing Liu (China) 6-3, 4-6, 6-4; Satomi Kinjo (Japan) bt Jana Hlavackova (Cze) 7-5, 7-5; Maria Kondratieva (Russia) bt Yuliana Fedak (Ukraine) 6-2, 6-7(7), 6-3 and Eva birnerova (Cze) bt Goulnarg Fattakhefdinova (Rus) 6-4,7-5.

Yesterday's report
Rushmi Chakravarti justifies wild card