Senthil starts on strong note at ITF World Tennis Tour J300; Varun and Arnav secure upset wins

New Delhi, Jan 6 (PTI) Top seed Senthil Kumar began his campaign with a comfortable straight-set victory against Japan's Eito Komada, while Varun Verma pulled off an upset by defeating seventh seed Ilya Maltsev at the ITF J300 tournament here on Monday.

Coming into the season's first tournament, Senthil pocketed the opening set without fuss but then faced some resistance from his Japanese rival before prevailing 6-3 6-4.

In complete contrast, Varun had to work hard for his 7-5 7-5 win over Maltsev as the two players fought tooth and nail and dished out high-quality tennis.

Joining them in the second round were Arnav Paparkar and Samrath Sahita as at least four Indians made it to the second round of the junior tournament that is offering 300 ranking points.

Arnav also took down a seeded player in Turkey's Kerem Yilmaz, eking out a 6-1 6-4 victory, while Samrath beat Alan Aiukhanov with an identical scoreline.

However, it turned out to be a disappointing day for other home players such as Rian Sharma, Aarav Chawla, and Shanker Heisnam.

Shankar was no match for eighth seed Roman Kharlamov, losing 1-6 2-6, while Aarav lost to Korea's Hyeon Seok Seo 6-2 6-1.

Rian put up a spirited fight against Korean fourth seed Donghyun Hwang but eventually ended the event with a 5-7 2-6 loss in the opening round.

Among other winners were American Roshan Sanhosh and Alexey Shibaev.

In the girls singles, India did not have much to rejoice except for Rishitha Reddy Basireddy and Aishwarya Jadhav's contrasting wins as three other players could not cross the first round hurdle.

Basireddy had to dig deep to edge past Kazakhstan's Eva Korysheva 7-6 (4) 6-3, while Aishwarya was fluent in her 6-2 6-3 win over Daria Koreshkova.

Riya Sachdeva, Aishi Bisht and Mahika Khanna though fell by the wayside. PTI ATK ATK AH AH