The Maharashtra State Lawn Tennis Association is all set to bring tennis action to the city by organising the PMR Open ATP Challenger 100 Men’s International Tennis Championship. The championship will be held from February 26 to March 5 at the Mhalunge Balewadi Tennis Stadium.
Players from 25 countries will be seen in action and the 108-ranked Tsen Cheun Hsin (21) from Taipei will be the top seed. James Duckworth of Australia (137), Sebastian Ofner of Austria (152), Ryan Peniston of Great Britain (159), Italians Luca Nardi (164) and Flavio Cobolli (172) are the probable seeds of the event.
“Indian players Sumit Nagal and local lad Arjun Kadhe have been granted wildcards to the main draw. We will have four more wild cards in the qualifying rounds declared soon,” said Sunder Iyer, honorary secretary of the association.
The prize kitty for the event is $1,30,000 (Rs 1.06 crore). The winner will receive 100 ATP ranking points and $17,650 (Rs 14.47 lakh) and the runner-up 60 ATP points with $10,380 (Rs 8.5 lakh) the first-round loser receives $1,270 (Rs 1.04 lakh). The qualifiers also receive an incentive of $380 (Rs 31,000).
The premier high-level ATP Challenger is sponsored by the Pune Metropolitan Regional Development Authority under a five-year agreement and is the third of a series of ATP Challenger 100 events held in India. The previous tournaments were held in Chennai and Bengaluru.
Andrei Kornilov of Uzbekistan will be the ATP supervisor for the event while Sheetal Iyer will be the referee of the event to be held with the cooperation of the Maharashtra sports and youth affairs department.
