Kannan, Ghouse sail into
second round

Third seed Vijay Kannan of Tamil Nadu and fourth seed Mustafa Ghouse of Maharashtra recorded fluent victories in the men's singles in the opening round of the DSCL National Open Tennis Championships in Delhi on Tuesday.

The big-serving Kannan beat Viplav Anjan of Andhra Pradesh 6-4, 6-3 in just over an hour while Ghouse outplayed Chitlangia Ritesh of Rajasthan 6-1, 6-2 in just 50 minutes.

"I am not satisfied with my performance today... my ground strokes were not coming good. I have to pick up my game in the later stages of the tournament," Kannan said after the match.

It was a different story for Ghouse, who expressed happiness with his performance.

"I served well and my groundstrokes were also coming good... I think I played really well," he said.

Sixth seed Vinod Sridhar of Tamil Nadu also had an easy outing, beating Amod Wakaikar of Maharashtra 6-2, 6-2.

In the women's singles, top seed Sheetal Gotham of Karnataka routed Ragini Vimal of Bengal 6-4, 6-1 while third seed Sonal Phadke of Maharashtra outplayed Sandra Sashidharan of Kerala, winning 6-4, 6-0.

Similarly, fourth seed Ankita Bhambri had it easy against Parul Goswami 6-2, 6-0.