Prajnesh loses early

Prajnesh Gunneswaran made an early exit from the second leg of the Bengaluru Open ATP Challenger tournament, losing to Australian top seed Aleksandar Vukic 4-6, 2-6 in the opening round on Monday.

Aleksandar Vukic was hardly troubled by Prajnesh Gunneswaran. (Source: QUINN ROONEY)

It capped a disappointing few days for Prajnesh, a former champion in the city, as he could muster just one match-win across two tournaments.

In a first-round clash between two wild cards, Arjun Kadhe beat Adil Kalyanpur 6-2, 6-2. Elsewhere, Sasikumar Mukund and Nitin Kumar Sinha earned main draw berths after coming through the final round of qualifying while Digvijaypratap Singh and Sriram Balaji lost.

The results: First round: Arjun Kadhe bt Adil Kalyanpur 6-2, 6-2; Aleksandar Vukic (Aus) bt Prajnesh Gunneswaran 6-4, 6-2; Dimitar Kuzmanov (Bul) bt Hugo Grenier (Fra) 6-4, 6-3; Mark Polmans (Aus) bt Evgeny Donskoy (Rus) 6-3, 7-6(7); Max Purcell (Aus) bt Jason Kubler (Aus) 5-7, 6-3, 6-0; Steven Diez (Can) bt Kimmer Coppejans (Bel) 6-2, 6-1.

Qualifying: Final round: Sasikumar Mukund bt Manish Sureshkumar 7-5, 1-6, 6-3; Nitin Kumar Sinha bt Rio Noguchi (Jpn) 6-4, 6-7(5), 6-1; Andrew Harris (Aus) bt Digvijaypratap Singh 6-4, 7-5; Markos Kalovelonis (Gre) bt Sriram Balaji 6-4, 4-6, 6-4.