Prajnesh top seeded for Chennai Open ATP

The Chennai Open Challenger 80 tennis tournament will be held from February 4 to 10 at the SDAT tennis stadium in the city.

India's Prajnesh Gunneswaran in action at the Australian Open on Monday.

After losing Chennai Open, now known as Tata Open Maharashtra, to Pune last year, the Tamil Nadu Tennis Association (TNTA) is back with an ATP Challenger event in the city.

The Chennai Open Challenger 80 tennis tournament will be held from February 4 to 10 at the SDAT tennis stadium here.

India’s Prajnesh Gunneswaran (World No. 109) will be the top seed. He is the third Indian — besides Somdev Devvarman and Yuki Bhambri — in the last five years to qualify for the singles event of a Grand Slam event.

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The other Indians in the fray are Saket Myneni and Sasi Kumar Mukund. The wild card route is likely to bring in four more Indian players in the main draw.

Japan's Yuichi Sugita (World No. 145), Courentin Moutet (France, 151), Martinez Pedro (Spain, 165), Mohamad Safwat (Egypt, 186) follow the seeding order.

This event will carry a prize money of US $54500.

TNTA president Vijay Amritraj said, “The tournament will benefit Indian players to improve their ranking and break into the top-100 in the World. With the support of the Government of Tamil Nadu, the Sports Development Authority of Tamil Nadu (SDAT), and the associate sponsors and partners, we intend to conduct major international tournaments every year.

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“It's free entry for the public, which should encourage the sports and tennis-loving people to come to witness the high-quality tennis action led by Prajnesh.”

The matches will be played between 10 am and 6 pm everyday. The singles and the doubles finals are scheduled for February 10 afternoon.

All the matches will be streamed live on the ATP website.