Sahaja Yamalapalli will open against top seed Carlota Cirez of Spain in the $30,000 ITF women’s tennis tournament to be played at the Tennis Project, Baliyawas, from Tuesday.
It will be another good opportunity for Sahaja and the rest of the Indian players to capitalise on the home advantage and improve their status on the WTA ranking list.
It will be a challenging week in the presence of high quality players from around the world, especially the Russians and the Japanese, but that would only improve the quality of the Indian players.
The top quarter has Vaidehi Chaudhari and Shrivalli Bhamidipaty also, apart from Sahaja. It will be interesting to see how the Indian players cope with the newly resurfaced courts that play true, slow and high.
The country’s No.1 Ankita Raina is the only Indian player to be seeded, at No.7 and will play compatriot Riya Bhatia in the first round. Zeel Desai, Smriti Bhasin and Aditi Rawat are the other wild card entrants apart from Riya.
Only Aditi has her first round main draw match against fourth seed Haruka Kaji of Japan on Tuesday. Thus, the rest of the players will have one more day to sharpen their form and fitness.
Humera Bharmus, Yashaswini Panwar, Shruti Ahlawat, Pooja Ingale, Akanksha Nitture and Prathyusha Rachapudi have reached the third and final qualifying round. That would mean at least one more Indian in the main draw, as Pooja and Akanksha meet each other in the final round. The other five have also been playing very good quality and thus it should not be a surprise if more Indian players make the cut.
It will be a great chance for the captain of the Indian team for the Billie Jean King Cup, Vishal Uppal, who is also the Tournament Director, to observe the players and gauge the quality of their game and fitness, before the Asia-Oceania event scheduled in Pune in April.
The seedings: 1. Carlota Cirez (Esp), 2. Ekaterina Makarova, 3. Mei Yamaguchi (Jpn), 4. Haruka Kaji (Jpn), 5. Kristina Dmitruk (Blr), 6. Amandine Hesse (Fra), 7. Ankita Raina, 8. Mariia Tkacheva.
Published – March 03, 2025 08:01 pm IST