Davis Cupper and third seed Rohan Bopanna crashed out of the ITF Futures tennis tournament, losing to unseeded Vijay Kannan in straight sets in a first round match in Chennai on Monday.
Bopanna's potent first serve let him down, as Kannan, playing better all-round tennis, pulled off a 6-2, 6-3 upset at the Nungambakkam Tennis stadium.
The Karnataka player, recovering from a shoulder injury, failed to find his moorings and Kannan took full advantage of it and broke him twice each in the first and second sets to advance.
Kannan, who served better and exhibited good control over his shots, broke Bopanna, a hopeful for Indian squad for its Davis Cup tie next month, in the third game and again in the seventh before serving out the first set.
Bopanna continued to struggle with his first serves in the second set and was broken in the opening game itself. Kannan raced to a 3-1 lead after his opponent managed to hold serve in the third. Thereafter, games went on serve.
Kannan was in a spot of bother down 0-30 in the eighth game, but rallied well to close the game for a 5-3 lead.
Bopanna, serving to stay in the match, then committed a couple of double faults on crucial points to bow out tamely.
Bopanna also received a warning from the Chair Umpire for code violation when he hit a ball out of the court after disputing a line call.
In another first round match, Indonesia's seventh seed Febi Widhiyanto quelled a strong challenge from unseeded Karol Dusan of the Czech Republic to carve out a 7-5, 2-6, 6-3 win.
Widhiyanto was up 3-1, breaking Dusan in the fourth game, but allowed the latter to level the scores 5-5, conceding a break in the ninth game. However, the Indonesian, ranked 546 against Dusan's 763, bounced back and clinched the set.
Dusan got himself into the match-winning second set, breaking Widhiyanto in the first and seventh games.
In the decider, the higher-ranked Indonesian found his touch and broke an error-prone Dusan in the second and fourth games to take a solid 5-0 lead.
But Dusan was in no mood to give up meekly and staged another recovery, winning three games in a row to reduce the margin to 3-5. However, he could not prevent Widhyanto from taking the match on his next serve.
In a match featuring unseeded players, Karin Maamoun of Egypt defeated Prima Simpatiaji (Indonesia) 6-2, 6-3.
Poland's Filio Urban scored a facile 6-2, 6-2 win over country-mate Filio Anilola to sail into the second round.
Meanwhile, India's Ajay Ramswamy and V M Ranjeet, Tai Wei Liu (Taipei), Dmitrv Mazur and Sarvar Ikramov (Uzbekistan), Wang Yu Wang (China), Foos Kallias (Cyprus) and Julien Lnclin (Belgium) qualified for the main draw.
In the final qualifying round, Ramaswamy overcame Japan's Masatosh Kanavama 6-0, 2-6, 7-6 (5) while Ranjeet defeated Mussad Al Jazzaf (Kuwait) 7-5, 6-2.
The other Indian contender, Nitin Kirtane, lost to Wand 3-6, 2-6.
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