Bopanna and Sun seeded first and second

Chandigarh, Mar 30 (UNI) Wild card entrant Rohan Bopanna of India and China's Peng Sun have been seeded first and second in the singles in the main draw of the 10,000 US Doller India F5 Futures ITF Men's Circuit which begins tomorrow at the Chandigarh Lawn Tennis Association Stadium in Sector 10.

28-year-old Bangalore-based Bopanna is ranked 328th while Sun's ranking is 487th. Bopanna has been drawn to meet local lad and trainee of Chandigarh Lawn Tennis Association wild card Vijayant Malik (1322nd ranked) in the opening round.

Second seed Sun, who lost to Nathan Thomson of US in semi-final at Gurgaon, will face qualifier in his first round.

Nathan went on to win the India F4 Futures ITF Men's Circuit in Gurgaon, will face Japanese Katsushi Fukuda (1023rd) in first round encounter. fourth seeded Asuthosh Singh of India will cross swords with Divij Sharan of India.

Promising Yuki Bhambri (1679th) of India, who has been given wild card, will challenge John McGahon (926th) of Israel while another wild card entrant Harsh Mankad will meet qualifier in their opener.

Six Indians -- Vishnu Vardhan, Virali Murugesan, Rupesh Roy, N Vijay Sundar Prashanth, Prajnesh Gunneswaran and Mithu Murali -- advanced to the final qualifying round today.

Five Chinese -- Ji Shi, Hul Zhang, Xiao Qi, Zhuo-Qing and Ye Du -- are also giving impressive display as they moved into final qualifying round. Idan Rosenberg (Isr), Ilya Belyaev (Russia), Christoph Lessiak (Austria), Ciaran Moore (South Africa) and P Siriluethaiwatana (Thailand) were the other foreign players who took their appointed place in the final qualifying round. The final qualifying matches will be played tomorrow.

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