Pereira claims girls' under-16 crown

Sharjah: Rikeetha Pereira continued her dominance in the junior girls with a classy 7-6, 6-2 win over Victoria Holjevac in the finals of the girls under-16 at the Hotel Holiday International Sharjah Open Junior Tennis Championship.

The third-seeded Pereira did not have the best of starts as Holjevac broke in the very first game. But the Indian girl kept her cool and both players broke each other's serves for the next eight games till the crucial tie-breaker that Pereira won 7-4.

In the second set, Pereira built up an easy 5-1 lead only to see Holjevac hold serve and make it 2-5. Pereira then served out the set and match to win yet another title.

Semi-finals

In the boy's under-16 semi-finals, Dhruv Bahl upset top seed Puneet Varrier 1-6, 7-6, 6-4 to enter the final where he will take on Adham Gabr, who outclassed Joshua D'Silva 6-0, 6-0 in the second semi-finals.

Meanwhile, in the boy's under-18 singles, Shaun Keegan outplayed Shubham Gupta 6-0, 6-2 to move into the semi-finals and in the girls under-14 singles, Husseina Netterwala got the better of Rhea D'Souza 6-2,6-3, Emelia Shwarts defeated Namarta Dutta 6-0, 6-4 and Ambika Arora beat Divya Gulawani 6-0, 6-2.

Mahesh blanked

The boys under-11 competition also got under way with top seed Amir Rakhmov blanking Kunal Mahesh 6-0, 6-0 while Sidarth Ragunath got the better of Zoran Vinay Rao 6-2, 6-2 and Linus Shwarts defeated Jason John 6-0, 6-1.

This UAE National Ranking tournament will conclude on Saturday [May 26]. The tournament is sponsored by Hagen Das and Sun and Sand Sports.

RESULTS

Boy's U-12: Bharat Amritraj bt Ebrahim Khalid 6-2, 6-3; Evci Haktem bt Rohit Ghosh 6-0, 6-0.

Boy's U-14: Anirudh Kamath bt Andrei Ermakov 6-4, 7-6; Dhruv Bahl bt Shashata Battage 6-0, 6-0; Aswath Amritraj bt Rayan Meeran 6-2, 6-1.

Girls U-12: Marietta Papazyan bt Anuka Sethi 6-0, 6-1; Zeba Amina bt Diana Onla 6-3, 6-0.