TENNIS – BAHRAIN’S Sophia Bader was crowned girls’ singles champion in the Bahrain ATF 16U tournament, played at the Bahrain Tennis Federation (BTF) hard courts in Isa Town.
Sophia secured her title after upsetting second seed Fatima Albaajari from Saudi Arabia 6-4, 6-0 in their final.
Sophia’s triumph wrapped up her sensational tournament campaign – one in which she took down three seeded players en route to claiming her crown. Sophia had earlier beaten girls’ top seed Salman Faragallah in the quarter-finals before ousting fourth seed Mariam Alabbasi in the semis. Both her higher-ranked opponents are also from Bahrain.
Meanwhile, Mariam joined Sophia and Fatima in the girls’ singles top three after beating fellow-Bahraini and third seed Gharam Isa 6-0, 6-0 in their concluding classification contest.
On the distaff, Bahraini brothers Ahmed and Talal Alsayed captured the boys’ doubles title after beating the pair of Parthe Sane from India and Abdulrahman Aldoseri from Bahrain 3-6, 6-2, 12-10 in their final.
Ahmed and Talal lived up to their billing as the doubles’ top seeds but needed to dig deep to defeat their fourth-seeded opponents, who pushed them to the maximum.
Ahmed now has a chance to secure a title in the competition. He has also made it through to the boys’ singles final, where he will take on fourth seed Ahmad Sarouji from Saudi.
Ahmed beat another Saudi in seventh seed Ali Alahmad 7-6 (3), 6-2 in the semi-finals, while Ahmad overcame Hashim Altoobli from Bahrain 6-3, 6-4. Ali and Hashim will face off for third place.
Following both the girls’ singles and boys’ doubles finals, the champions and runners-up were presented their respective trophies and medals by Bahrain Tennis Federation vice-president Shaikh Khalid bin Rashid Al Khalifa, in the presence of BTF board members Mohammed Alsayed and Adnan Kamal.
Following this Bahrain ATF 16U competition, another Asian Tennis Federation (ATF) event will be taking place at the BTF hard courts. These are part of a series of exciting, high-level tennis championships that will be held in Bahrain over the next few months at the international, continental, and regional levels.
They are to be headlined by an ATP Challenger Tour tournament, a pair of competitions on the International Tennis Federation (ITF) Men’s World Tennis Tour, and the Davis Cup Asia/Oceania Group V – all of which will be taking place in an action-packed November.
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