Federer's defence starts with Minar

The women's world No 1 and top seed, Maria Sharapova, faces a tough first-round match against Eleni Daniilidou of Greece.

Federer has been ruthless this year at the business end of Grand Slam tournaments, so his appearance on a New York stock exchange floor this morning should be no surprise.

Federer will ring the bell to open the day's business on the Nasdaq stock exchange in Times Square. Federer won the Nasdaq-100 Open in Florida in April.

The Swiss is seeded at No 1 for the US Open which starts on Monday at Flushing Meadows. The No 2 seed is his opponent from the Nasdaq-100 Open final, the Spanish teenager, Rafael Nadal, this year's French Open champion.

Lleyton Hewitt of Australia, Andy Roddick of the United States and the Russian Marat Safin complete the top five seeds. Andre Agassi is seeded seventh ahead of Russia's Nikolay Davydenko and the two-times former champion opens his campaign against Romanian Razvan Sabau. The British No 1 Tim Henman is seeded 12.

Arvind Parmar has progressed to the second round of qualification for Flushing Meadows after beating Adam Chadaj in straight sets. Parmar beat his Polish opponent, 6-3, 6-0, although three other Britons will not be at Flushing Meadows after defeats.

David Sherwood lost to the Croatian Sasa Tuksar, 3-6, 7-6, 6-1, while Jamie Delgado lost, 6-3, 6-3, to Yeu-Tzuoo Wang, of Taiwan, and Alex Bogdanovic went out, 6-4, 7-6, to Amer Delic. Andy Murray was due to play a qualification match last night.

At the New Haven Open in Connecticut, the No 9 seed, Greg Rusedski, withdrew yesterday citing fatigue. The Briton, who reached the semi-finals of the Montreal Masters this month, said he needed to rest to prepare for the US Open. He is the last British representative to have played in the final at Flushing Meadows , losing to the Australian Patrick Rafter in 1997.