Lucy Brown & Hilda Melander win the doubles in Gloucester
The top seeded pairing of Britain’s Lucy Brown and Sweden’s Hilda Melander finished their week with a win in the doubles final at Oxstalls Sports Park.
Up against the fourth seeds, Beth Askew & Katy Dunne, and in front of a great Gloucester crowd, the top seeds were playing together for the second time. Their first tournament together, a $10,000 in Austria last August, was a successful venture as the pair won the title, so they were aiming for two out of two here in Gloucester.
The first set was very close, each pair holding serve comfortably and delighting the crowd with high quality tennis. In the 12thgame, leading 6-5, the top seeds took advantage of a couple of errors from their opponents and at 15-40 on Askew’s serve they only need one set point to clinch the first set.
In contrast to the first, the second set saw both pairs break serve consecutively. Level at 3-3, the top seeds found another gear, winning three consecutive games for the loss of just one point to claim the doubles title, 75 63.
Commenting after the match on their win the pair said “It feels great, we’ve only played together once before so it has been a good week.”
In the singles semi-finals, Katy Dunne’s run came to an end as she was beaten 62 64 by Belgium’s Klaartje Liebens. The Brit is ranked 77 places below the Belgian, however, in their only previous meeting last year in Egypt Dunne was victorious. Both players are in their first year out of juniors and are climbing the WTA rankings so it was an exciting match up.
Liebens had the better start, breaking serve twice and establishing a 4-0 lead. Dunne was able to reclaim one of the breaks in the sixth game to close the gap to 4-2, however, the Belgian regained control and served out the first set 62.
The second set was much closer, and whilst the Brit fought hard to stay with her opponent, Liebens managed to break in the seventh game and continued to hold serve herself to produce a 62 64 win and book her place in Saturday’s final.
After the match Liebens said “I played quite solid, all my other matches have been three sets so I am really happy to win in two sets.”
Her opponent on Saturday is third seed Bernada Pera from the USA, who knocked out top seed Hiroko Kuwata from Japan in the second semi-final.
Pera took a commanding lead in the match winning the first set 61 in 22 minutes. She continued to dominate in the second set with some heavy hitting. The Japanese top seed halted the run of games against her momentarily as she fought back to 3-4 but Pera proved too strong on this occasion, wrapping up victory in 55 minutes, 61 63.
Reflecting on the match and tomorrow’s final Pera said “I played great, I needed a few matches to get into my rhythm but today was good. Klaartje is really good, she played amazing today so I think it is going to be a tough match tomorrow.”
Oxstalls Sports Park
Darren.Morris@aspiretrust.org.uk
01452 396969
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