The battle for International Tennis Federation (ITF) world-ranking points produced some bruising battles on the second day at the South African Airways ITF Futures Tournament at Kelvin Grove, Newlands, on Wednesday.
In the process, some of the seeded players succumbed in windy conditions, with Great Britain's Edward Seator, the second seed, heading the list of first-round casualties.
The other seeds to end on the also-rans scrapheap included New York's Paul Warkentin, the fourth seed, and Nigeria's Candy Idoko, the sixth seed.
Seator (610 world ranked) started out comfortably against Austria's Richard Ruckelshausen (1 194) and ran up a 5-3 lead but his game collapsed and failed to win another game and surrendered the set 7-5.
Ruckelshausen's first-set finish seemed to lift his game and he broke service in the third game of the next set, the American started suffering mentally as the pressure built up and he was never able to recover.