PUNE, May 13: Wild card entrant Ajay Ramaswami who has the potential of being a percentage player, sounded a warning to the top players of the Indian tennis fraternity, when he knocked out fifth-seed Anand Sukumar of Karnataka in the first round of the men's singles event, thus marking the first upset in the Western India tennis tournament for the Rocket Trophy at the Deccan Gymkhana courts today.

Ramaswami, a Batra Tennis Academy student, who was the national under-16 champion last year, displayed his growing stature in his 6-1 6-2 annhilation of Sukumar.

Also joining him in the day's list of heroes was the unseeded Karnataka-lad DR Jayadeva, who served out the off-coloured sixth-seed Intikhab Ali in straight sets 6-0 6-0 in the evening session. This apart, all the other six seeded players made it into the pre-quarterfinal round with straight-set wins over respective rivals.

Unseeded player Vijay Kannan of Delhi fought his heart out against the second seed KV Ganesh of Tamil Nadu, but lost in the nail biting first set 5-7 and then went down 4-6 in the grueling second set.

In the women's doubles event, the unseeded pair of Reetu Sethi and Mable Abraham upset the fourth seeded Aparna Srinivasan and Nehal Chopra 6-4 6-2. Results (seeding in prefix)

Men's singles (first round): 1-Vasudev Reddy (AP) bt S Narendranath (Mah) 6-2 6-2; Ajay Ramaswami (Mah) bt 5-Anand Sukumar (Kar) 6-1 6-2; Y Sandeep (AP) bt Anjan Viplav (AP) 6-2 6-2; 8-CV Anand (TN) bt Shikha Singh (Mah) 6-2 6-2; 4-P Srinath (Kar) bt M Vijaykumar (AP) 6-2 6-0; Bhaskar Chowdhary (Asm) bt Ankush Chhabra (Mah) 6-2 6-0; Umang Chhada (Guj) bt R Balaji (TN) 6-3 6-3; 3-Nitin Kirtane (Mah) bt S Zaman (Ben) 6-0 6-1; 7-Shailesh Dhoble (Mah) bt Ronney Sarkar (Ben) 6-0 1-0 (conceded); DR Jayadeva (Kar) bt 6-Intikhab Ali (Mah) 6-0 6-0; K Shivshankar (Kar) bt Vijayendra Laad (Mah) 6-1 6-1; Amod Wakalkar (Mah) bt Girish Ramchandani (Guj) 6-2 6-1; Rohan Wadhera (Del) bt Paraj Natekar (Mah) 4-6 6-3 6-2; 2-KV Ganesh (TN) bt Vijay Kumar (Del) 7-5 6-4.

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