Indian hopes suffered a blow as Prakash Amritraj made a premature exit while Vivek Shokeen scored a hard-fought win over qualifier Aditya Madkekar in the first round of the US $15,OOO ITF Futures men's tennis event in Delhi on Monday.

Amritraj, who was to play his first round match on Tuesday, pulled out of the event citing a shoulder strain.

Amritraj had reached the semi-finals of a similar event in Mumbai last week.

Ireland's Shahab Hassabi Nafez took his place as a lucky loser.

Shokeen showed his mental resilience in defeating Madkekar, who had come through a tough qualifying round, winning 7-5, 6-3 at the DLTA Complex.

The 'most looked forward to' match of the day between Sunil Kumar Sipaeya and Kamala Kannan turned out to be a damp squib as the former, the sixth seed, breezed past the Chennai lad 6-3, 6-3.

Three of the four wild cards made their exit with Navdeep Singh going down to Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan 6-3, 6-3 and Ashutosh Singh offering little challenge in his 6-2, 6-3 defeat to Israeli seventh seed Dekel Valtzer.

Davis Cupper Vishal Uppal too had it easy against Purav Raja, winning 6-3, 6-2.

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