Chennai, Jan 30 (Reporter) Big time tennis action returns to the megapolis when the the Chennai Open ATP Challenger 100 Men’s International Tennis Championship 2025 will be held here from February two to nine. It will hosted by the Tamil Nadu Tennis Association (TNTA)--which is celebrating 2025 as its centenary year--at the SDAT Tennis Stadium, Nungambakkam here. Apart from India, top players from 14 countries--Czech Republic, Great Britain, South Africa, Croatia, Japan, Hong Kong, Kazakhstan, Canada, Uzbekistan, Spain, Hungary, France, Italy, and Turkey--will be participating in the week long event which was expected to provide thrilling contests. The top seed is Billy Harris ranked 127 now and was among the top 8 player in Great Britain,a release from TNTA said on Thursday evening. He is followed at No 2 by Lloyd Harris of Republic of South Africa ranked 135. The other seeds are Duje Ajdukovic (CRO-138), Shintaro Mochizuki (JPN-169), Sho Shimabukuro (JPN - 191), Timofey Skatov (KAZ-194), Alexis Galarneau (CAN-198), Khumoyun Sultanov (UZB – 216) and Aslan Karatsev (222). Anne Bees of Canada will be the ATP Supervisor and Hiten Joshi, the Tournament Director. Ramkumar Ramanathan, Mukund Sasikumar and Karan Singh, members of India’s current Davis Cup team, the former two being from Tamil Nadu, have been given wild cards for the Main Draw. The main draw consists of 32 players--23 direct entries, 3 wild cards and 6 qualifiers. The Qualifying rounds, to be held on Sunday, consists of 24 players with 4 wild cards. The main draw matches will commence from February 3, Monday. While the Doubles finals will be played on February 8, the Singles final will be held on February 9, Sunday. The prize money for the event is USD 160,000/- (Rs.1.06 crores). The singles title winner will get a purse of USD 22,730 (Rs 19,32,050) and 100 points, while the Runner-up will receive USD 13,350 (Rs 11,34,750) and 50 points. The Doubles winners will receive USD 7,960 (Rs 6,76,600) and Runner-up USD 4,600 (Rs 3,91,000). The Chennai Event is the first of a series of ATP Challenger 100 events to be held in India. The next few tournaments are to be held at Delhi, Pune, and Bengaluru. In the last ATP Challenger event held in 2024 in Chennai, Sumit Nagal, India’s top player, won the event and went on to crack the top 100 in world ranking, eventually reaching a career high ranking of 68 later in the year. TNTA President and former Davis Cupper Vijay Amritraj said “On behalf of TNTA, I thank the Tamil Nadu Government and all the sponsors for their consistent support to tennis over the years." "The conduct of international tournaments such as the ATP Challenger enable Indian players to excel on the world stage and has encouraged TNTA to embark on an ambitious Player Development program called 'THE NEXT LEVEL', an effort to provide financial and technical support to top Tamil Nadu juniors to enable them to play to their potential and achieve tennis excellence", he said. He said 17-year-old Rethin Pranav from Karur, who has been a part of the programme, became the National Men’s Singles Champion and was one of two Indians to participate in the Australian Open Junior Singles event in 2025. The tournament is being hosted with the support of the Government of Tamil Nadu and the cooperation of the Sports Development Authority of Tamil Nadu...////...