Paes not seeded, wild card for Hesh

Paes not seeded, wild card for Hesh
EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE

Mumbai, February 11: A slip in the current ranking took its toll on Leander Paes on Sunday as he was deprived of a seeding in the $ 50,000 MTNL ATP Challenger tennis tournament starting at the Deco Turf of the Cricket Club of India here from Monday.

The seeding committee picked players ranking from the highest of 162 to 227 and Paes whose earlier ranking was given as 196 is not among the eight seeds headed by Italian Filipo Volandri.

The organisers spirits were down a bit when Paes informed them of his inability to join his regular partner Mahesh Bhupathi in doubles. They were hoping to draw crowds as both would have featured for the first time together after attaining world status which has recently taken a beating.

Now Syed Fazuluddin, who lost both his singles against China in Davis Cup, will partner Bhupathi. They are seeded second.

Another setback for the Indian camp was the failure of any Indian to qualify for the main singles draw.

Vinod Sridhar, Rzahul Bopanna and Manoj Mahadevan all lost in the second last round of the qualifying.

Meanwhile, Bhupathi, Prakash Amritraj, Syed Fazuluddin and new National champion Mustafa Ghouse were given the four wild cards. However, Ghouse meets Paes in the first round on Tuesday.

Amritraj, America based son of Vijay, meets second seeded Italian Vincenzo Santo Padre. Bhupathi will also have his hands full in the first as he takes on fourth seeded Dennis Van Sceppingen of Hoallnd. Fazuluddin has the toughest first round meeting with top seeded Volandri.

In the doubles, three Indian pairs were given wild cards Mahadevan and Kedar Shah, Bopanna and M Ghouse and Saurav Panja and Nitin Kirtane.Because of strict International Tennis Federation rules the government of India was forced to permit a Pakistani player to enter the doubles event of the challenger. Aslam Quereshi of Pakistan and Scheppingen of Holand have been seeded fourth.