Somdev

Mumbai: Somdev Dev Varman and Prakash Amritraj, the two Indian wild cards, have received challenging draws in the $450,000 Chennai Open men’s tennis event.

Dev Varman, the highest ranked Indian on the ATP Tour at 204, faces the mouth-watering prospect of taking on two-time champion and former world No.1 Carlos Moya in the second round after being drawn against American Kim Kevin in the first.

“I am not thinking about the second round at the moment. I am only focused on playing Kevin Kim,” Dev Varman said after the draw ceremony of the hard court event at the Nungambakkam stadium on Saturday.

The main draw matches start on Monday.

Amritraj, who is also placed in the same bottom half of the 32-size draw, has a tougher task as he is pitted against fifth seed Rainer Schuettler of Germany.

Dev Varman and Amritraj have also been handed a high-profile opening round in the doubles.

The wild-card pair will be up against top seeds Mahesh Bhupathi and Mark Knowles of the Bahamas.

The other Indian combination, wild card duo Harsh Mankad and Yuki Bhambri, will take on Eric Butorac and Rajeev Ram of the US.

They are in the bottom half of the draw which also features Leander Paes and Lukas Dlouhy of the Czech Republic as the second seeds.

Rohan Bopanna shocked sixth seed Michel Koning of the Netherlands in a 6-7 (3-7), 7-6 (1-7), 7-6 (7-4) thriller in the first round of qualifying.

Sixteen-year-old Yuki Bhambri, however, was shown the door by compatriot Sanam Singh after a 4-6, 6-4, 6-1 loss.