Vishnu keen to keep good run going

Davis Cupper Vishnu Vardhan will be the cynosure when the Toyota $10,000 ITF Open tennis tournament begins here at the KSLTA courts on Monday.

Vishnu, seeded second here, won the Mysore Open on Saturday, defeating seventh seed N Sriram Balaji in the final. He had skipped the Mandya leg which was won by fellow Indian Saket Myneni.

Myneni, who had outplayed third seed Vijayant Malik in Mandya, will skip the Bangalore leg, with the 24-year-old scheduled to play in Germany.

On the eve of the tournament, Vishnu hoped he would be able to continue the good run. “I hope to carry on with the momentum and put up a good show here,” he said.

Apart from Vishnu (ranked 357 in the world), a clutch of top Indian players in the draw — Malik (439), Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan (443), Ranjeet Virali-Murugesan (484) and N Sriram Balaji (542) — will put pressure on the top seed Taipei’s Chen Ti, ranked 309.

Malik, who was finalist at Mandya and semifinalist at Mysore, is seeded third here and will be hoping to go all the way while Davis Cupper Karan Rastogi, who is nursing a sore shoulder, will skip the Bangalore leg.

Results (Final qualifying round, prefix denotes seeding): Krishik Divakar bt Shahbaaz Khan 6-3, 6-4; Aaditya Tewari bt 1-Sumeet Shinde 6-4, 6-4; Jatin Dahiya bt 2-Fariz Mohammed 6-7 (7-1), 6-4, 6-2; Yogesh Phogat bt Rynold Timothy 6-4, 6-2; Bharatram Balajee bt Vikram Naidu Bangalore Srinivas 6-4, 6-3; 4-Elwin Antony bt Sagar Ahuja 6-1, 6-1; 3-Ajai Selvaraj bt Murtaza Lohani 6-0, 6-0; Manpreet Singh Chawla bt Alok Aradhya 6-3, 6-4.