India's leading player Rohan Bopanna eased past Vishal Uppal 7-5, 6-4 to move into the second round of the $10,000 ITF Futures men's tennis tournament at the Delhi Lawn Tennis Association courts on Tuesday.
After an early setback in the first set, the fifth seeded Bopanna needed an hour and ten minutes to wrap up the match.
Wild card Uppal, four years older to his opponent but ranked outside the 700, pulled out a few tricks from his bag to break Bopanna in the fifth game and go up 5-3. But serving for the match, he put himself under pressure after committing a double-fault. Bopanna, ranked 387, capitalised on the opportunity to break back and level the scores at 5-5.
From there on it was smooth sailing for the 22-year-old youngster as he served and returned strongly to win the match.
Other Indians to progress into the second round included Sunil Kumar Sipaeya, Manoj Mahadevan and Vinod Sridhar.
Sipaeya overcame his inconsistent serving in the first set, where he dropped serves twice, to beat Suwandi Suwandi of Indonesia 6-4, 6-4.
Sipaeya next meets Mahadevan, who was stretched to three sets by Russian Alexei Ageev before prevailing 7-5, 4-6, 6-4.
Sridhar defeated Frederic Jean Claude of France 6-3, 6-2 to set up a second round clash with the second seed Dmitri Vlasov of Russia.
"I am strong from the baseline and my backhand shot is also a natural cricket-like shot but I need to improve my volleys and net play," said Sridhar after the match.
Nitin Kirtane displayed poor form and lost to qualifier Alexander Pavlioutchenkov 6-3, 7-6 (7/3). The Indian struggled to strike up a good rhythm, and although he broke the Russian twice in the second set, his game suffered a low once again in the tie-breaker as he lost his match.
Malaysian Yew Ming Si, who had made an impression with his defeat of Mustafa Ghouse in a classic three hour-plus battle last August at the same venue, once again displayed his tenacity in a 6-4, 1-6, 6-2 victory over Lauri Kiiski.
Having needed to come through the qualifying rounds, Si displayed tremendous fighting spirit as he recovered from a second set reversal to defeat the Finland player.
In a late match, another Indian made his exit when 536-ranked Mustafa Ghouse went down to Todor Enev of Bulgaria, the seventh seed and winner of the first leg at Lucknow, 7-6(8/6), 6-4.
