Tseng joins exodus of seeds

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru: It was an exodus of fancied players in the first round of the Bengaluru Open 2 ATP Challenger with the biggest casualty being the defending champion and eighth seed Chun-hsin Tseng crashing out of the tournament.

The man in form, Tseng who had won the Bengaluru Open 1 just a couple of days ago, went down tamely to Greece qualifier Markos Kalovelonis in straight sets 2-6, 2-6 in a match that lasted just 62 minutes.“Today was one of the best matches of my life. His game suits me a little bit and my tactics worked,” said Kalovelonis after the match.

A total of five seeded players bit the dust in their opening encounters on Tuesday.

While Swiss Antoine Bellier felled fourth seed Federico Gaio of Italy in straight sets, 6-4, 6-3, Andrey Kuznetsov of Russia won a long-fought battle against fifth-seeded Czech Vit Kopriva 6-1, 1-6, 6-3. Seventh seed and local favourite Ramkumar Ramanathan flattered to deceive as he went down to unseeded Frenchman Mathias Bourgue 6-4, 3-6, 2-6. Runner-up last week Czech Borna Gojo survived a scare against qualifier Dominik Palan before prevailing 4-6, 6-3, 6-4.

The only consolation for the Indian camp was the entry of Sidharth Rawat into the last 16 after he went past Mukund Sasikumar 6-4, 6-4.