With the elimination of Harsh Mankad in the final qualifying round today, Indian entries in the main singles draw has been restricted to the four wild cards to Prahlad Srinath, Mahesh Bhupathi, Syed Fazaluddin and Vijay Kannan.

The qualifying round was so strong that almost every player had some ATP points, resulting in most Indians making an early exit.

This may not be a pretty start to a year which promises to be good for Indian tennis with plenty of points and money to be won from tournaments in the country.

Only Srinath, the second highest Indian in the ATP singles list, made a mark at Ahmedabad by entering the quarters. The rest, including Mahesh Bhupathi, guilty of playing too many tournaments in recent times, disappointed.

But MSLTA with its newly-laid DecoTurf court andfloodlights, will look at this tournament with pride going into the new year. The newly-named GA Ranade Tennis Centre is only the first step in what the organisers claim to be a year full of achievements for them.

Action begins here tomorrow with top seed David Caldwell (USA, ranked 182) taking on Gregory Carraz of France. The only Indian drawn to play on the opening day is Vijay Kannan, who will take on Andrei Merinov under floodlights. Davis Cupper Prahlad Srinath is scheduled to with teammate Syed Fazalddin in the first round, while Mahesh Bhupathi will take on sixth seed Eyal Ryan of Israel, ranked nearly 200 rungs above him. Winners of these two matches will clash in the pre-quarter-final.

The organisers meanwhile announced wildcards to the doubles pairs Mahesh Bhupathi and Gaurav Natekar, Syed Fazaluddin and Sebastian Dechaunac, and Vijay Kannan and Anthony Dupius, while Nitin and Sandeep Kirtane have been directly accepted into the doubles main draw.

Seedings

/B>Singles: 1 DavidCaldwell (USA, 182), 2 Razwan Sabau (Rom, 193), 3 Anthony Dupuis (Fra, 208), 4 Lior Mor (Isr, 213), 5 Oleg Ogrodev (Uzb, 225), 6 Eyal Ran (Isr, 230), 7 Oren Motevassel (Isr, 234), 8 Goichi Motomura (Jap, 236).

Doubles: 1 Noam Behr/ Eyal Ran (Isr), 2 Ivan Lujbicic (Cro)/ Goichi Motumara (Jap), 3 Noam Okun/ Nir Welgreen (Isr), 4 Gregory Carraz/ Regis Lavergne (Fra).

Results (Men's Singles final qualifying round): Kobi Ziv (Isr) bt Harsh Mankad (Ind) 6-1, 6-1; Mashika Washington (USA) bt Aisan Qureshi (Pak) 2-6, 6-4, 6-2; Sebestian Dechaunac (Fra) bt Arvind Parmar (GBr) 6-4, 6-3; Olivere Mutis (Fra) bt Lavergne Regis (Fra) 6-2, 6-3.