Jamaica’s top seed Dustin Brown failed to make the main draw of the Aircel Chennai Open tennis tournament in India yesterday, falling at the final hurdle of the men’s singles qualifying round.

He lost 2-6, 5-7 to Chinese Taipei’s Yang Tsung-Hua in the Pool Three finals in a match lasting one hour and eight minutes.

Tsung-Hua broke Brown twice in the first game and had to save three break points before closing out the set.

Brown, who hails from Montego Bay, improved his game in the second set and managed to break his opponent, but Tsung-Hua broke back twice to claim victory and advance to the main draw which served off late yesterday evening.

The 25-year-old Brown, who got to the qualifying finals by beating USA’s Todd Widom (6-4, 6-3) and Jan Minar of Czech Republic (6-4, 6-4), would clearly be a disappointed man as he had set sights on taking on some of the big names in the game currently such as Robin Soderling, Carlos Moya, Marin Cilic and Stanislas Wawrinka.

Ranked 144th in the world, Brown is regarded as one to watch for the New Year following his meteoric rise in 2009, blasting up the ATP rankings by 355 places.