Mahek Jain was India’s sole victor in the Deccan ITF tournament in Pune on Tuesday, prevailing over Ksenia Palkina Of Kyrgyzstan 6-3, 6-2 to progress to the second round. Jain will now take on top seed Jia-Jing Lu who made easy work is Taipei’s Pei-Chi Lee 6-0, 6-3. Meanwhile Ankita Raina, who disappointed in Solapur, defeated former junior Australian Open winner Tereza Mihalikova in Dubai.
Wildcards Zeel Desai, Snehal Mane and Lucky loser Natasha Palha were shown the door in the first round of the main draw. Another wildcard, Bhuvana Kalva, was handed a sound thrashing by winner of the Solapur leg, Russian Marina Melnikova, who closed the match 6-2, 6-2.
In the opening match sixth seeded Valeriya Strakhova of Ukraine outhit wildcard Desai 6-1, 6-4. Fifth seeded Junri Namigata of Japan proved to be too strong for Mane, handing her a double Bagel 6-0, 6-0 while Georgian’s Mariam Bolkvadze defeated Palha 6-4, 6-4 to move into the second round.
Seventh seeded Katarzyna Piter of Poland, qualifiers Aleksandrina Naydenova of Bulgaria and Chieh-Yu Hsu of Chinese Taipei, Julie Gervais of France and third seeded Katarzyna Kawa of Poland were the other players to make it to the second round.
