Prajnesh, Sumit get byes in first round of Bengaluru Open
India’s top ranked players defending champion Prajnesh Gunneswaran and 2017 winner Sumit Nagal will have an easy outing as they earned a bye in their respective opening matches at the Bengaluru Open ATP Challenger that kicks off on Monday. Prajnesh is seeded 7th while Sumit is seeded 8th with Lithuanian Ricardas Berankis earning the top billing at the draw ceremony held just before the launch of the mega event.
Italian Stefano Travaglia was seeded second while Yuichi Sugita of Japan and Australian James Duckworth were seeded third and fourth respectively. All the four top seeds are ranked below 100 in World ATP rankings.
The other Indian in fray include Sasi Mukund, Sidharth Rawat, Saketh Myneni, Ramesh Ramanathan who all earned a direct entry while the wildcards include Prajwal Dev, Niki Poonacha, Adil Kalyanpur, Arjun Kadhe and Suraj Prabodh.
The top 10 seeds: [1] Ricardas Berankis (LTU); [2] Stefano Travaglia (ITA); [3] Yuichi Sugita (JPN);
[4] James Duckworth (AUS); [5] Jiri Vesely (CZE); [6] Evgeny Donskoy (RUS); [7] Prajnesh Gunneswaran (IND); [8] Sumit Nagal (IND); [9] Thomas. Fabbiano (ITA); [10] Zhizhen Zhang (CHN)
Pic: Sumit Nagal (left) picks up a ball during the draw ceremony at the KSLTA on Friday. Also seen are Mr. M. Lakshminarayana, IAS, Vice President, KSLTA and Advisor to the Honorable Chief Minister, Govt. of Karnataka, Tournament Director Sunil Yajaman and ATP Supervisor Andrey Kornilov (extreme right)...
