National hard court champion Vinodh Sridhar turned in a sterling performance to defeat last week's semifinalist Dmitry Mazur 6-3, 6-3 in the first round of the $10,000 ITF Futures men's tennis tournament at New Delhi on Monday.
Former Asian junior champion and fifth seed Sunil Kumar Sipaeya also advanced to the second round with a 6-1, 6-3 victory over wild card Gurmehar Singh at the DLTA Courts, New Delhi.
Another wild card Renouk Wijemanne also made his exit, losing 3-6, 0-6 to Britain's Michael Ouvarov while Jaco Mathew, a lucky loser coming for John Thivolle of France, bowed out after a 3-6, 1-6 defeat against eighth seed Melvyn Op der Heijde of the Netherlands.
If seedings were to hold, the tournament would witness an Indo-Pak final between Harsh Mankad and Aisam ul-Haq Qureshi who won the title in Dehradun last week.
The event could also see an Indo-Pak winner as Mankad will partner Qureshi in the doubles and have been top seeded.
Mankad takes on Arunprakash Rajagopalan, a wild card, while Qureshi faces a qualifier Kamala Kannan in their first round matches on Tuesday.
In another interesting first round match, the fourth wild card Shivan Mishra takes on qualifier Somdev Dev Varman.
