New York, Sept 01: Mahesh Bhupathi and Paola Suarez of Argentina conceded their second round mixed doubles tie against South African Liezel Huber and Pavel Vizner of the Czech Republic at the US Open Tennis Championships yesterday. There was mixed luck for India in the junior championships as Tara Iyer made it to the main draw while Karan Rastogi, Somdev Dev Varman and Sanaa Bhambri made their exit in the first round.
Tara did well to come through two qualifying rounds, defeating Logan Hansen 6-3 6-1 in the first round and Lauren Albanese 6-1 1-6 6-3 in the second round, both the opponents being home favourites. She is up against another American, top seed Bethanie Mattek in the first round of the main draw.
Dev Varman went down 7-6 (7/2) 6-7 (5/7) 5-7 to the 13th seed Frederico Gil of Portugal while Rastogi fell to Adam Fass of the US 4-6 6-4 0-6.
Sanaa Bhambri was forced to retired midway through the match due to a troubling left-elbow. She was trailing 2-6 0-3 against Volha Havartsova of Belarus, and would miss the doubles play too.
Arun P Rajagoplan, another qualifier in the boys' singles, lost to Horacio Zeballos of Argentina 4-6 4-6. Divij Sharan and Sania Mirza are the Indian hopes remaining in the main draw.
Meanwhile, Sunil Kumar Sipaeya won the $10,000 Futures Tournament in Tunisia when his opponent Patrickj Noblach of Germany retired hurt midway in the final yesterday.
Sipaeya was leading 6-7 (2/7) 6-2 3-0 when his opponent retired hurt.
Sipayea's victory makes it a double for India in international circuit with Rohan Bopanna winning in Jakarta the same weekend. The last time an Indian won in international circuit was two years ago when Harsh Mankad won in Canada. Bureau Report