CHENNAI, 13 Feb: Indian players Sumit Nagal and Sasikumar Mukund entered the singles main draw of the Chennai Open ATP Challenger tennis tournament with victories in their respective qualifying round matches in Chennai on Monday.
Nagal posted a fluent 6-1, 6-3 win over Ji Sung Nam in his second round qualifying while Mukund stunned Jason Jung of Taipei, the No.1 seed in the qualifying, 4-6, 6-4, 6-4 to book their spots in the main draw.
Digvijaypratap Singh, however, lost 2-6, 6-7 (2) to third-seed James McCabe of Australia to make an exit from the tournament.
With Nagal and Mukund qualifying for the main draw, India will have four players in the fray as the duo join the country’s top stars Prajnesh Gunneswaran and Ramkumar Ramanathan.
The 26-year-old Mukund wore down Jung in a battle that lasted two hours and 24 minutes. He will meet 2022 Wimbledon men’s doubles champion Max Purcell in the first round of the main draw.
Nagal faces fourth seed Ryan Peniston of Great Britain in the first round.
Prajnesh and Ramkumar, who received wild card entries into the 32-player main draw, take on Jay Clarke (Great Britain) and Dimitar Kuzamanov in their respective opening matches.
There was a huge upset in the singles main draw with Seong Chan Hong beating third-seed Sebastian Ofner of Austria 6-4, 6-3 in the first round.
In another first round match, top-seeded Chun-hsin Tseng, ranked 132 in the world, survived a tough battle against Nino Serdarusic before prevailing 6-4, 7-6 in one hour and 58 minutes.
Yasutaka Uchiyama, Nicolas Moreno de Alboran and Arthur Cazaux won their respective first round matches to advance to the round of 16. (PTI)