Indian wild card recipients Rohan Bopanna (picture right) and Somdev Dev Varman have got relatively easier first-round matches when they drew players ranked outside the top 100 in the ATP rankings as their opening round singles opponents at the $4,16,000 Kingfisher Airlines Mumbai Open on Saturday. Bopanna, ranked 245 and India’s number 1, will play 117th-ranked Frenchman Nicolas Devilder. Dev Varman will face 20-year-old Italian Fabio Fognini in the first round match to start on September 24 after the qualifying rounds.Bopanna is to play in the doubles too with Aisam Qureshi as his partner. Frenchman Richard Gasquet, world-ranked 14th, is the top seed while former two-time Grand Slam champion Lleyton Hewitt of Australia is the second seed in the main draw. Gasquet is to play Kristof Vliegen of Belgium, while Hewitt drew a qualifier as his opening round opponent. The singles winner and runner-up would receive $65,850 and $35,500 respectively while the corresponding amounts for the doubles are $20,250 and $11,550. The singles champion would also pocket 175 points, the losing finalist 120, the semi-finalists 75 each, quarter finalists 50 and losers in the round of sixteen 15 each. The qualifiers to the main draw would get five points each but none would be awarded to first-round losers in the round of 32. Nicolas Kiefer of Germany, a top-five player in 2000 but on a comeback trail back into the top 100 after a wrist-injury lay-off, is the third wild card in the 32-man singles draw, which also includes four qualifiers.
