Tough opponents await Indian girls in the $25,000 tennis in Navi Mumbai
National champion Mahak Jain will start against third seed Ya-Hsuan Lee of Chinese Taipei in the IWTC $25,000 ITF women’s tennis tournament to be played at the Ganesh Naik Tennis Complex in Navi Mumbai from Monday.
The Indian challenge has been restricted to the four wild card entrants apart from the two qualifiers Sowjanya Bavisetti and Zeel Desai, in the absence of Ankita Raina and Karman Kaur Thandi.
Jennifer Luikham, Mihika Yadav and Akanksha NItture are the other three wild card entrants, and will play fourth seed Hiroko Kuwata of Japan, second seed Barbara Haas of Austria and lucky loser Naho Sato of Japan respectively.
Zeel will play fellow qualifier Maria Marfutina of Russia while Sowjanya will also play another qualifier, Emily Webley-Smith of Britain.
The seedings: 1. Dejana Radanovic (SRB), 2. Barbara Haas (AUT), 3. Ya-Hsuan Lee (TPE), 4. Hiroko Kuwata (JPN), 5. Katarzyna Kawa (POL), 6. Valeriya Strakhova (UKR), 7. Diana Marcinkevica (LAT), 8. Tessah Andrian Jafitrimo (FRA).
The results:
Qualifying singles (second and final round): Sowjanya Bavisetti bt Ksenia Palkina (KGZ) 6-4, 6-3; Gozal Ainitdinova (KAZ) bt Pei-Chi Lee (TPE) 6-2, 7-5; Jacqueline Cako (USA) bt Ya-Hsin Lee (TPE) 6-4, 6-3; Julie Gervais (FRA) bt Riya Bhatia 6-1, 6-3; Chieh-Yu Hsu (Tpe) bt Albina Khabibulina (UZB) 6-3, 6-2; Zeel Desai bt Natasha Palha 6-7(2), 6-4, 6-0; Maria Marfutina (RUS) bt Naho Sato (JPN) 6-1, 4-6, 6-2; Emily Webley-Smith (GBR) bt Ana Veselinovic (MNE) 7-5, 1-1 (retired).
First round: Sowjanya Bavisetti bt Nandini Das 6-1, 6-4; Pei-Chi Lee bt Avika Sagwal 6-1, 6-0; Ya-Hsin Lee bt Pareen Shivekar 7-6(4), 6-4; Julie Gervais bt Leera Raju 6-0, 6-0; Riya Bhatia bt Tejasvi Kate 6-0, 6-1; chieh-Yu Hsu bt Sanjeevani Patil 6-0, 6-0; Albina Khabibulina bt Soha Sadiq 6-4, 7-5; Natasha Palha bt Jessica Ho (USA) 6-4, 4-6, 6-4; Zeel Desai bt Monalisa Chakraborty 6-0, 6-0; Maria Marfutina bt Saumya Vig 6-1, 7-5; Naho Sato bt Ishita Parikh 6-4, 6-0; Emily Webley-Smith bt Emerald Able (USA) 6-3, 6-0; Ana Veselinovic bt Priyanka Shah (USA) 7-6(1), 6-4.
