Top seed Senthil makes winning start in ITF World Tennis Tour J300

New Delhi, Jan 6 Top seed and home favourite Senthil Kumar notched up a fluent straight sets win over Japan's Eito Komada while Varun Verma knocked out seventh seed Ilya Maltsev to move to the second round of the boys' category of the International Tennis Federation (ITF) J300 event at the DLTA Complex on Monday.

Coming into the season's first tournament, Senthil pocketed the opening set without fuss but faced some resistance from his Japanese rival before prevailing 6-3, 6-4.

In complete contrast, Varun had to really work hard for his 7-5, 7-5 over Maltsev as the two players fought tooth and nail and, in the process, dished out high-quality tennis at court number six.

Joining them in the second round were Arnav Paparkar and Samrath Sahita as at least four Indians made it to the second round of the junior tournament that is offering 300 ranking points. Arnav also took down a seeded player in Turkey's Kerem Yilmaz, eking out a 6-1, 6-4 victory while Samrath beat Alan Aiukhanov with an identical scoreline.

However, it turned out to be a disappointing day for other home players such as Rian Sharma, Aarav Chawla, and Shanker Heisnam. Shankar was no match for eighth seed Roman Kharlamov, who walked out a 6-1, 6-2 winner, while Aarav became a victim of Korea's Hyeon Seok Seo, who won 6-2, 6-1. Rian put up a spirited fight against Korean fourth seed Donghyun Hwang but eventually ended the event with a 5-7, 2-6 loss in the opening round. Among the other winners were American Roshan Santhosh and Alexey Shibaev.

In the girls' singles, India did not have much to rejoice about except Rishitha Reddy Basireddy and Aishwarya Jadhav's contrasting wins as three other players could not cross the first-round hurdle.

Basireddy had to dig deep to edge past Kazakhstan's Eva Korysheva 7-6(4), 6-3 while Aishwarya was fluent in her 6-2, 6-3 win over Daria Koreshkova. Riya Sachdeva, Aishi Bisht, and Mahika Khanna though unfortunately fell by the wayside.