Four seeds bite the dust
in ITF Futures

Four of the eight seeded players fell at the first hurdle in the second leg of the ITF men's Futures tennis tournament in Delhi on Tuesday, throwing the competition wide open.

Qualifier Yew Ming Si from Malaysia played a highly tactical game to outduel top seed Mustafa Ghouse 6-7(7/9), 7-6(7/4), 6-3 in three hours and 30 minutes in a first round match.

Third seeded Sunil Kumar Sipaeya also made an early exit, going down to Pavel Lobanov of Russia, a player ranked 368 positions below him at 898, 1-6, 1-6.

Another Russian, Pavel Ivanov, who won the Chandigarh leg, ousted fourth seed Vijay Kannan 6-4, 4-6, 6-4 to continue his splendid run while qualifier Kedar Tembe shut the door on fifth seeded Nitin Kirtane 6-4, 6-2.

Another star player, although unseeded, to bite the dust was Davis Cupper Harsh Mankad, who could not withstand the superior fire power of Juraj Hasko. The Slovak, ranked as high as 507 as against Mankad's 807, is the second seed and also reached the semi-finals last week.

Another Slovak Boris Borgula, the sixth seed, and Manoj Mahadevan, the eighth seed, were the other two seeds to move into the second round.

Borgula accounted for Anton Kokurin of Uzbekistan 6-1, 6-1 while Mahadevan overcame wildcard entrant Saurabh Singh 6-3, 7-5.

Jan Masik, seeded seventh, had made it to the second round yesterday, beating lucky loser Vijayendra Laad 6-3, 6-1.