And, though the thin turnout on a chilly November evening wasn't really a surprise, the quiet rescheduling of the originally scheduled India-Pakistan tie to Tuesday was the real dampener.

With the frills of an inaugural ceremony and other stuff cut out this time around, the second edition of the Asian team championship got off to a nice and quiet start with Korea swamping Thailand in straight sets.

In the first tie, Korea's Hueng Keon Song (No 1103) held serve throughout and stroked cleanly to romp to a 6-2, 6-1 win over Attapol Rithiwatanapom. The second rubber featuring 259th ranked Hyung Taik Lee against Narathorn Srichaphan, promised more classy tennis, but there wasnothing more than the ordinary on offer today.

Broken in the very first game, Lee took all of the first set just to loosen up, and was lucky that his opponent never really got into the match. Keeping the ball safe and deep, Lee gratefully wrapped it up on Srichaphan's unforced errors. Late in the second set, Srichaphan set off visions of a Thai revival holding serve to set up a 4-5 scoreline. But Lee held serve and closed it out on his first volley -- the only time he moved in on his first serve throughout the match.

Three other quarter-finals -- Chinese Taipei vs Indonesia, China vs Uzbekistan and India vs Pakistan -- will be played on Tuesday.

Results: (1st quarter-final)

Korea bt Thailand

Singles: Hyeong-Keun Song (Korea) bt Attapol Rithiwatanpom (Thai) 6-2, 6-1

Hyung Taik Lee (Korea) bt Narathorn Srichaphan (Thai) 6-3, 6-4

Uncertainty over women's team for Asiad

NEW DELHI: The fate of the women's tennis team for the Asian Games is still in a limbo even as the AITA topbrass is caught up with the second edition of the Asia Cup at the DTA courts.While all six players - Leander Paes, Mahesh Bhupathi, Syed Fazaluddin, Prahlad Srinath, Vijay Kannan and Nitin Kirtane - have been cleared for the men's team, only three women -- Nirupama, Uzma Khan and Sai Jayalakshmi -- have been cleared in the original list of six.So the young Shruti Dhawan, who had a wonderful run at the recently concluded ITF Future Circuit, Rushmi Chakravarty and Manisha Malhotra may not board the Bangkok flight.According to a source in the Indian Olympic Association, a recent ministerial meeting came round to the view that the girls are a medal prospect only in the mixed doubles event but not in the singles and doubles event.