Leander Paes and Somdev Dev Varman, in Chennai

Chennai: Somdev Dev Varman begins his bid for a top-100 return while an age-defying Leander Paes could again run into his estranged doubles partner Mahesh Bhupathi, who returns to the court after a nine-month gap when the Chennai Open begins here on Monday.

Other than Indian troika of Somdev, Paes and Bhupathi, the Chennai crowd up will turn up at the SDAT Tennis Stadium to see world No. 4 and reigning Australian Open champion Stanislas Wawrinka.

The Swiss player is the favourite to defend his title here in what will be his seventh appearance.

“I like Chennai very much. The atmosphere is always great and the fans are amazing, that’s why I keep coming back. The crowd makes that stadium go wild. The tournament was a great start to an amazing year in 2014 and I hope that it will be the same in 2015,” said Wawrinka.

While Wawrinka has been given a first-round bye, India’s best bet and 138th-ranked Somdev has a tough opener against World No.38 Yen-Hsun Lu of Chinese Taipei.

“It will be a tough match and Yen had come off a fantastic season breaking into the top 40. I had practised with him in Doha… He is a strong opponent,” said Somdev.

Another Indian wild card in the main draw is 241st-ranked Ramkumar Ramanathan, who takes on 93rd-ranked Tatsuma Ito of Japan in the first round. The 20-year-old rose to prominence after humbling Somdev in opening round here last year.

The other singles players to lookout for include Spain’s second seed Feliciano Lopez, his countryman and third seed Roberto Bautista Agut and fourth seed David Goffin of Belgium.

In the doubles, Bhupathi partners Saketh Myneni and makes a comeback to the court after March 2014 when he played in the ATP World Tour Masters 1000 Miami event with Kevin Anderson. It will be interesting to see how many tournaments the 40-year-old plays this season.

Bhupathi-Myneni have been handed a wild card alongside another Indian pair of Sriram Balaji and Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan.

Paes enters his 25th ATP season at home and will pair up with Raven Klaasen of South Africa. The top seeds have a bye in the first round and are drawn to meet Bhupathi-Myneni or Colombia’s Alejandro Falla and Alejandro Gonzalez in the second round.

Paes, the doubles specialist, at 41 continues his efforts to get back into top 10 from his present ranking of 29 and still harbours hopes of playing in his seventh Olympics, at Rio in 2016. But his immediate target is to improve his doubles ranking that has nosedived.

Winner of 14 Grand Slam doubles titles, Paes said: “At this stage in my career, I am playing for pure passion. It is actually quite a refreshing feeling.”

The 2014 season which he described as 'probably the hardest I had as a professional athlete', saw him pairing up with different partners, but with just one title (Kuala Lumpur) to show.

Purav Raja has teamed up with Canada’s Adil Shamasdin. They play their opener against Aljaz Bedene and Damir Dzumhur.

Meanwhile, Indian Davis Cupper Yuki Bhambri’s hopes of playing in the main round were dashed as he lost to local lad N Prasanth in the second round of the qualifiers.

Yuki squandered a set advantage to lose 6-1 6-7 (3) 3-6.

Yuki started off well and looked favourite to pocket the match in straight sets but Prasanth fought gallantly in the second and third set to stun his fancied rival.

It was a bad start to the season for Yuki. It looked he was not able to bear the hot and humid conditions. Other Indians to make it to the third round of the qualifiers were another Chennai lad S Mukund, who defeated German P Torebko 6-4, 1-6, 6-2, while K Kaza played superbly to withstand the onslaught of Russian A Kudryavtsev 6-4, 6-7 (5), 7-6(4).