Ankita Raina does a double in Thailand to win her first title in 2020
The top-ranked Indian women tennis player dropped just two sets in her run to the finals of both the events.
India’s number one women's tennis player Ankita Raina got the better of France’s Chloé Paquet 6-3, 7-5 in straight sets on Sunday to lift the singles title at the ITF Thailand Tennis Championships held in Nonthaburi.
Ranked 171 in the world, Ankita Raina came into the tournament as the third seed and managed to clinch her first title of 2020.
World no. 178 Chloé Paquet was up for the task right from the word go but her increasing double faults didn’t help the cause. And while Chloé Paquet did manage to pick seven aces in the entire match, a more accurate Ankita Raina won 64 points as opposed to Pacquet’s 58 to win the final.
This win comes one day after the 27-year-old won the doubles title at the WTA tournament alongside Dutch partner Bibiane Schoofs.
They were facing Thailand’s Mananchaya Sawangkaew and Supapitch Kuearum in the final on Saturday, where the Indo-Dutch pair clinched a straightforward win.
Ankita Raina and Bibiane Schoofs upstaged their opponents in the 6-4, 6-2 victory having won all their seven breakpoints, winning 59 points to the local duo’s 42.
Ankita Raina’s smooth run to final
Barring fourth-seeded Chloé Paquet, Ankita Raina had to overcome the challenge of South Africa’s Chanel Simmonds, Romania’s Nicoleta Dascălu, Switzerland’s Simona Waltert and Leonie Kung to reach the summit clash.
Ankita Raina dropped just one set each in the singles and doubles event in her run to the titles; Swiss Waltert bagged one in the singles quarter-final event and the Chinese-Japanese pair of Zhang Ying and Moyuka Uchijima managed to win a set in the doubles event.
This win will serve as a huge confidence-booster for Ankita Raina, who started 2020 with losses against Romania’s Patricia Maria Țig at the ITF Australian Championships semi-final and Bulgaria’s Viktoriya Tomova in the Australian Open qualifiers.