The Hindu : Sport / Tennis : Ankita starts favourite

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Jan 30, 2006

Sport

Sport - Tennis

Ankita starts favourite

Kamesh Srinivasan

MUZAFFARNAGAR: Ankita Bhambri will be the favourite for the trophy in the Bhavna Swarup memorial $10,000 ITF women's tennis tournament to be played at the Services Club grass courts here from Monday.

The 19-year-old Delhi girl who had finished runner-up to Sania Mirza in the Asian junior championship in 2002 is slowly getting into her stride.

Ankita had won the title in a similar tournament in Delhi on Saturday and is keen to build on her form for the WTA tournament to be played in Bangalore. In fact, she has won the title in the last two $10,000 events that she has competed.

The withdrawal of Rushmi Chakravarthi, the national grass court champion and Isha Lakhani, the reigning national hard court champion, should boost the chances of Ankita.

Of course, there are quality players like Sai Jayalakshmy, Sandhya Nagaraj and Megha Vakharia who can trouble Ankita on their day.

It will be interesting to see as to how well the 16-year-old Ksenia Palkina of Kyrgyzstan, who has had a successful four weeks so far in India in the ITF junior and women's circuit, copes with the task of playing on the unpredictable surface. She will have a tough start against Sonal Phadke.

The fourth-seeded Sai Jayalakshmy will be up against the qualifier Liza Pereira, who has been stroking quite well of late.

Sandhya is seeded seventh, and will be finding the conditions cold after the hot experience in Australia. She starts against wild card Sandri Gangothri.

The seedings: 1. Ankita Bhambri, 2. Nicole Clerico (Ita), 3. Megha Vakharia, 4. Sai Jayalakshmy, 5. Paarul Goswami, 6. Czarina Mae Arevalo (Phi), 7. Sandhya Nagaraj and 8. Ksenia Palkina (Kgz).

The results:

(qualifying event final round): Ragini Vimal bt Pallavi Sharma 6-2, 6-2; Liza Pereira bt Yamini Thukkaiandi 6-0, 6-4; Subi Sundaram bt Varsha Shivshankar 7-5, 7-5; Anupama Rajur bt Shashirekha Jallihal Ballery 6-1, 6-0; Parija Maloo bt Anushri Thammanna 6-1, 6-2; Natalia Semenenko (Rus) bt Katie Muller (RSA) 7-5, 6-0; Irina Kuzmenko (Rus) bt Wei Ping Lee (Sin) 7-6(5), 7-6(3); Penporn Chantawannop (Tha) bt Chirashanthi Rajur 6-4, 6-2.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail