NEW DELHI, Oct 4: With Prahlad Srinath pulling out with an ankle injury, the DSCL National hardcourt tennis championships gets off to a start with domestic heavyweights Vasudeva Reddy, Asif Ismail and the Kirtane cousins starring in an all too familiar setting at the Delhi Tennis Association courts here.Also missing is Syed Fazaluddin, who is away in the US playing Satellites. Two local youngsters Ashutosh Singh and Chandrashekhar Mohanty and Chennai's VN Premprakash, now a full time coach, and Rajkumar Gopalan have been given wild cards into the main draw.
The women's field is led by Andhra's Uzma Khan, but it's not going to be easy for her. Sai Jayalakshmi, Arati Ponappa, Archana Venkatraman, Rushmi Chakravarty are going to be a problem. And there's Mumbai's Janaki Krishnamurthy too, who can pull off a big surprise on her day. Uzma, incidentally is also top seeded in the under-18 event.
Qualifying for the main draw among women were S Anitha and Sumitra Rao (TN), Anisha Shellar, Lisa Pereira andRadhika Mandke (Maharashtra), Y Lakshmi Reddy and Geeta Manohar (AP) and Nikita Bhardwaj (Guj).
In girls' under-18, the qualifiers were Kasturi Bhatt, Sonal Phadke, and Jitisha Shelakar (Mah), Nikita Bhardwaj (Guj), Rani Smita Jain (Raj), Harsimran Kaur (Chd), Sumitra Rao (TN) and Y Lakshmi Reddy (AP).
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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