Yamalapalli lone Indian to be seeded in Maha Urja ITF women’s tennis tournament

Sahaja Yamalapalli is the lone Indian to be seeded in the Maha Urja $25,000 ITF women’s tennis tournament to be played on the clay courts of the MSLTA Academy in Ramnagar from Tuesday.

Fifth-seeded Sahaja will open against Vaidehi Chaudhari. She finds herself in the third quarter with fourth seed Diana Marcinkevica.

The country’s No.1 player, Ankita Raina is busy with the Petroleum tennis tournament in Delhi, and thus the Indian challenge would be that much less forceful.

However, national champion Shrivalli Bhamidipaty could provide the thrust as she opens against qualifier Anastasia Zolotareva. Zeel Desai starts against Akiko Omae of Japan.

Akanksha Nitture saved six match points in the second and final qualifying round to beat Joel Nichole 14-12 in the super tie-break, and was rewarded with a first round match against top seed Irina Maria Bara of Romania.

Anjalli Rathi, Vaishnavi Adkar, Humera Baharmus and Soha Sadiq were the other Indians to qualify for the main draw.

The wild cards were given to Sowjanya Bavisetti, Maithili Mothe, Sonall Patil and Sejal Bhutada.

It should be interesting to see how well the Indian players cope with the challenge and compete against the strong foreign players.