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Zi too hot for Kyra

Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI: Yang Zi proved a hard nut to crack for Kyra Shroff as the Indian girl went down 2-6, 1-6 in the girls' final of the Central Bank ITF juniors Grade II tennis tournament here on Friday.

The 17-year-old Kyra started on the wrong note as she got broken at love in the first game, and failed to change the flow of the contest as she tended to err in trying to overpower her strong opponent.

The wiry Chinese played a compact game, and thrived on the errors made by the Indian girl. The fourth-seeded Zi broke Kyra's serve five times to assert her authority.

It was the third successive victory for Zi against the Indian girl. All the same, it was an improvement for Kyra against the Chinese opponent as she had failed to win a game in their last meeting in Chandigarh in January in a Grade III tournament. Kyra had the game to match the Chinese but lacked the conviction in her ability. She wound up the match with a double fault.

Incidentally, the boys' final also ended with two successive double faults, but the comparison ended there. It was a slugfest between Ouyang Bowen and Wang Chuhan of China, and the two supreme athletes entertained the sparse gathering for three hours and 28 minutes with intense play.

Ouyang lost the first set following a break in a long-drawn 11th game that stretched to 12 deuces and spanned nearly 25 minutes. However, the left-hander bounced back to tame the gangling Wang over the next two hours of energetic tennis for a 5-7, 6-4, 7-5 triumph.

It was easily one of the best matches played at the venue in the junior circuit and provided a fine preview to the Asian junior tennis championship to be played at the same venue.

The results (finals): Boys: Ouyang Bowen (Chn) bt Wang Chuhan (Chn) 5-7, 6-4, 7-5. Doubles: Liang-Chi Huang & Chun Yu Lin (Tpe) bt Vladimir Polyakov (Rus) & Artem Tarasov (Uzb) 6-3, 6-4.

Girls: Yang Zi (Chn) bt Kyra Shroff 6-2, 6-1. Doubles: Li-Yun Stefanie Tan (Sin) & Yang Zhaoxuan (Chn) bt Anastasiya Prenko (Tkm) & Sabina Sharipova (Uzb) 6-4, 6-4 .

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