Favourites face little trouble

CALCUTTA, March 15: Seeds bore fruits on the opening day of the National Grasscourt Tennis Championships at the Calcutta Cricket and Football Club here. All the seeded players in view today moved into the second round without too much trouble.

Men’s top seed Vijay Kannan was hardly bothered by Anjan Viplav today. Kannan won 6-4, 6-4, warming up bigger matches that will come later. Veteran grasscourt player Asif Ismail too broke little sweat in beating Rishi Sridhar 6-4, 6-3. Ismail, who has put on considerable weight recently, used his big reach to serve and volley his way into the second round. Men’s (first round): 1-Vijay Kannan bt Anjan Viplav 6-4 6-4; 3-Nitin Kirtane (3) bt Sailesh Dhoble 6-4 6-3; 6-Sansaruz Zaman (6) bt Vishal P 6-4 6-1; 7-Vishal Uppal bt Sangram Chapekar 7-5 6-2; 8-Asif Ismail bt Rishi Sridhar 6-4 6-3; Manoj Mahadevan bt Anup Minda 6-3 7-6; Vasudev Reddy bt Akshay Vishal Rao 6-3 6-2; Prem Prakash bt 4-Rajesh Vohra 7-5 7-6; Ram Kumar bt Ramnath Roy 6-1 6-2; A Radhakrishnan btSidhartha Verma 6-2 6-1; Rohan Bopanna bt Vijayendra Laad 3-6 7-6 (7-5) 7-5; Vinod Sewa bt Bhaskar Choudhury 6-4 6-4; Jagdish Tanwar bt Kamlesh Shukla 6-4 6-4.

Women’s (first round): Sai Jayalakshmi (TN) bt Nikita Bhardwaj (Guj) 6-0 6-4; Manisha Malhotra (Mah) bt Ridhina Parekh (WB) 6-1 6-0; Archana V (Kar) bt Stuti Smit (Mah) 6-0 6-2; Rushmi Chakravaty (TN) bt Padma Preetham (TN) 6-0 6-0; Aarthi V (Kar) bt V Kameshwari (AP) 6-3 6-1; Karishma Patel (Guj) w/o S Patnaik; K Janaki (Mah) bt Sai Rajalakshmi (TN) 6-0 6-0; Sonal Phadke (Mah) bt Tarminder Kaur Grover (Chd) 6-0 6-0; Narayane (TN) w/o Jasleen Randhawa (Pun); Amita Gupta (Chd) bt Preeta Datta (WB) 6-0 6-3; Sujata Tasildar (WB) bt O Majumdar (WB) 7-5 2-6 6-3; Sumithra Rao (TN) bt Priyanka Parekh (WB) 6-1 6-2; Vishnu Preetham (TN) bt Simmi Rani (Chd) 6-0 6-4; Ragini Vimal (wB) bt Ashel Dimi 6-4 6-2; SK Tara (Kar) bt Jahnavi Sunderajan (Mah) 7-5 6-3.