London, June 20: India’s Somdev Devvarman has been pitted against 15th seed Jerzy Janowicz of Poland in the opening round of the men’s sigles event in this year’s Wimbledon.
Somdev, India’s lone challenge in the men’s singles, will have tough task at hand as he has landed in the same half of the draw along side fourth seed Roger Federer and fifth seed Stanislas Wawrinka of Switzerland and ninth seeded American John Isner.
If Somdev manages to register an upset win in the first round, he will next face the winner of the match between Lleyton Hewitt of Australia and Poland’s Michal Przysiezny.
But it is the men’s doubles event where India had a significant presence.
Veteran Leander Paes and his Czech partner are seeded fifth and will open their campaign against Poland’s Mariusz Fyrstenberg and Rajeev Ram of USA, while the eight-seeded Indo-Pak combination of Rohan Bopanna and Aisam-Ul-Haq Qureshi will face Czech-Russian pair of Frantisek Cermak and Mikhail Elgin in the first round.
The other Indians in the men’s doubles fray are young Divij Sharan and Purav Raja.
While Divij and his partner Yen-Hsun Lu of Chinese Taipei will take on Jamie Delgado of Great Britain and Luxemborg’s Gilles Muller in the opening round, Purav and Brazilian Marcelo Demoliner will play 15th seeds Juan Sebastian Cabal of Colombia and Poland’s Marcin Matkowski.
Meanwhile, Sania Mirza and Cara Black have been seeded fourth and will face Swiss-Russian duo of Martina Hingis and Vera Zvonareva in their opening women’s doubles encounter.
The draw for the mixed doubles event will be be held June 25. (PTI)
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