Vijay Kannan ousts Cyril Herviux to enter round two

Chennai, July 24 (UNI) On a day when rain threw the schedule out of gear again, three more Indians led by second seed Vijay Kannan made it to the pre-quarter finals with kannan accounting for Cyril Hervieux of France 6-2, 6-4 in straight sets, in the 10,000 dollars prize money ITF Futures tennis tournament here today.

Kannan, ranked 668, took on lower ranked(1044) French lad Hervieux with aplomb in the firt set giving away just two games. Hervieux waged a fight back in the second set but could not match the Indian Davis Cupper's better stroke play.

In other first round matches, Kiran Nandakumar ousted qualifier Kinshuk Sharma 6-0, 6-3, wild card entrant Kaushik Raju defeated another qualifier Siddarth Alapati 6-2, 6-3 while sixth seed Tatsuma Ito of Japan showed the exit door to another wild card Indian Rohan Gajjar, winning 6-3, 6-3.

Even as the matches in the morning, already rescheduled following rain last evening seemed to be progressing smoothly, it rained again making the three clay courts at the Gandhinagar Club unplayable.

Four more first round singles matches and three doubles for the day scheduled to start at 1300 hrs, in which the top seeded Pakistani Aqueel Khan was to begin his campaign, had to be pushed back, according to the organising committee.

UNI