Bangalore: Following his impressive showing last week in the second leg at Mysore, Vishnu Vardhan will start as the favourite in the $10,000 Toyota ITF Bangalore Open tennis tournament commencing here Monday.
The first two legs of the Karnataka tour were held at Mandya and Mysore. Vardhan skipped the first round but made up for it in the second with a convincing performance to win the title.
Vardhan, the second seed here, who beat N. Sriram Balaji in the Mysore final, said: "I hope to carry on with the momentum and put up a good show in Bangalore also."
Other key Indian contenders will be the third seed Vijayant Malik, finalist in Mandya and semi finalist in Mysore, and sixth seed Balaji.
The main foreign contenders in the fray are the top seed Ti-Chen of Chinese Taipei and the seventh seed Kittiphong Wachiramanowong of Thailand. Incidentally, Kittiphong defeated the top seed in the quarter finals of Mandya Open.
Missing the Bangalore are Indian Davis Cupper Karan Rastogi, who is nursing a shoulder niggle and Mandya Open winner Saket Myneni, who is scheduled to play in Germany.
For the Bangalore leg, Vishwanath Savadi, Venkat Iyer, Tejas Chaukulkar and the local lad Sagar Manjanna have received wild cards.
Final qualifying round results: Krishik Divakar bt Shahbaaz Khan 6-3, 6-4; 1-Aaditya Tewari bt Sumeet Shinde 6-4, 6-4; Jatin Dahiya bt 2-Fariz Mohammed 6-7(1), 6-4, 6-2; Yogesh Phogat bt Rynold Timothy 6-4, 6-2; Bharatram Balajee bt Vikram Naidu 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. (IANS)
