Indians have tough draw in SAIL Open challenger

New Delhi, May 10 (IANS) Indian tennis players face a tough draw in the $50,000 SAIL Open ATP Challenger, starting at the DLTA complex here Monday.

While Prakash Amritraj, ranked 246 on the ATP charts, plays a higher-ranked American Brendan Evans (198), Rohan Bopanna (303) will face Japanese Davis Cupper Go Soeda(132), seeded eighth here. In the Davis Cup tie last month here, Soeda had taken Prakash to five sets before losing.

Harsh Mankad (667) meets France's Oger Thomas (276) in the first round. If Mankad manages beat the Frenchman, he will most likely run into top seed and 90th ranked Chinese-Taipei (Taiwan) player Lu Yen-hsun, whose first-round opponent will be a qualifier.

Junior Davis Cupper Yuki Bhambri will take on unseeded Australian Adam Feeney in the inaugural round of the tournament.

While Amritraj and Bopanna have made it to the main draw on the basis of their rankings, Mankad, Bhambri and Ashutosh Singh have been handed out the wild cards. The fourth wild card has gone to Mohammed Ghareeb of Kuwait. Ashutosh meets eight-seeded Russian Alexandre Kudryavtsev.

Ashutosh got the wildcard after Karan Rastogi pulled out as he was not feeling up to it, having played a couple of tournaments on the trot.

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