The 6-1, 6-3 win, in which the former National champion never dropped his serve, set the German, ranked more that 500 places above the Indian, free to concentrate on his doubles.

Sandeep Kirtane, however, said he could play better than he did today. Notwithstanding his 6-3, 6-0 one hour, five-minute mauling of Britain's left-handed Mike Bolding at the Maharashtra State Lawn Tennis Association courts. ``I need to get sharper. I was just getting a feel of the courts,'' said the Puneite who is returning after a brief injury-forced lay-off.

Sandeep admitted that years of practice with left-handed cousin Nitin has put him at ease against left-handers and he proved the point with a controlled performance. Zipping ground-strokes marked his domination, aptly ending thematch with a forehand-down-the-line.

Prahlad Srinath and Nitin Kirtane joined the other two Indians while Mustafa Ghouse narrowly missed the bus to the second round of the $6,250 tournament.

Eighteen-year-old Ghouse stalked eighth seed Marian Leysek the whole of the first set, took it in the tie-breaker and then allowed his opponent to shake him off. Leysek kept the serve-and-volleyer Ghouse back, took the crucial break in the seventh game of the decider and held serve from thereon.

Ghouse, playing his third Satellite tournament, lost 7-6 (7-5), 6-4, 6-4 and admitted being troubled by the asphalt court's high bounce. The bounce bothered Nitin Kirtane too, but not enough, as the National champion survived a tough two-and-half-hour match against Ondrej Chvapil of the Czech Republic 5-7, 6-1, 6-4.

Kirtane dropped a set-point in the first and allowed his opponent to save two match points in the third set. But the Indian assured himself of a second-round place against third seed Federico Rovai with arunning forehand down the line.

Srinath beat Keerthi Basapparaju 6-3, 6-3 in a little over an hour, serving an ace at match point. Basapparaju, who recently trained for one year in the United States under mentor and coach Shirish Kumar, was plagued by a ``more-than-comfortable'' numbers of double faults against the second seed.

Results

Men's singles (first round): Prahalad Srinath (Ind, ranked 541) bt Keerthi Basapparaju (Ind) 6-3, 6-3; Marian Leysek (Svk, 942) bt Mustafa Ghouse (Ind) 6-7 (5-7), 6-4, 6-4; Vasudeva Reddy (Ind, 1237) bt Patrick Erhardt (Ger, 677) 6-1, 6-3; Sandeep Kirtane (Ind, 1201) bt Mike Boulding (GBR, 1222) 6-3, 6-0; Nitin Kirtane (Ind, 1201) bt Ondrej Chvapil (Cze, 1295) 5-7, 6-1, 6-4; Zoltan Boroczky (Hun, 1237) bt R Narendra (Ind) 6-1, 6-3; Niko Karagiannis (Gre, 901) bt Ben Gudzelak (GBR) 7-6 (7-5), 6-2; Danai Udomchoke (Tha, 1077) bt Rahul Gandhi (Ind) 6-0, 6-0.

Doubles (first round): Anand Radhakrishnan/Saurav Panja bt Mustafa Ghouse/Rishi Sridhar 6-1, 6-4; MarianLeysek/Timo Nigri bt Ravikiran Bhat/Sanzaruz Zaman 6-1, 7-5; Patrick Erhardt/Andy Fahlke bt Vijay Kanan/Harsh Mankad 4-6, 6-1, 7-6 (8-6); S Pravin Kumar/Gerhard Fahlke bt Vishal Gupta/Shailesh Dhoble 6-4, 6-4; Viplav/Keerthi Basapparaju bt Vinod Sridhar/Avinash Arun 6-3, 3-6, 6-2.