Even if they have little opportunity to defend those points as the calender has no tournament scheduled in the country till the October National at Chennai.

Maximum of five WTA points are at stake which the winner of the Masters at Lucknow will take. But that is after the three-legs at Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi have thrown up the 16 qualifiers for the Masters.

Meanwhile just eight played singles qualifying matches for the four available spots at the GA Ranade Tennis Centre today despite the qualifying draw having provision for 32 players. The four winners will join the 25 direct entries and three wild cards.

J Sai Jayalakshmy (509), the highest ranked Indian in the absence of Nirupama Vaidyanathan andNational champion Manisha Malhotra, is seeded No. 1 followed by Monique Adanczac (Aus, 531). Sai and Shruti Dhawan, a wild card entrant here, enjoyed decent successes in the ITF circuit held in October-November last year which helped them up the ranking by a reasonable margin.

But with the number of tournaments and prize-money on the decline the only thing that is sure to rise this week is the city temperature.