TOP seeds Charles Barry and Matthew Rutter reached the boys’ doubles quarter-finals last night in the 10th Bahrain ITF Juniors Championships 2018 at Bahrain Tennis Club (BTC).
Their girls’ doubles counterparts Tuana Tinaztepe and Oceane Babel followed suit and qualified for their own round of eight, as both victorious number one seeds led the teams marching forward.
Barry and Rutter needed to dig deep into their arsenal as the Irish-British duo claimed a hard-earned 6-2, 6-4 win against the Belgian-French Wild Card tandem of Harold Huens and Alexandre Ver Hulst.
Tuana and Oceane emerged comfortable 6-0, 6-0 winners against Aleina Elizabeth Alex of India and Anastasiia Kovalevskaia of Russia.
Amongst the boys, also making it through were second seeds Abdulla Al Barwani of Oman and Saud Alhaqbani of Saudi Arabia, as well as fourth seeds Christopher Fok Kow of Mauritius and Rahul Jaideep of India. The third-seeded Kuwaiti tandem of Ali Alshati and Essa Qabazard were upset by the Egyptian pair of Abd Elrahman Hassan and Youssef Nabil, who won their match 6-1, 7-5.
Others to qualify were the French partnership of Romain Gales and William Jucha, Egyptians Omar El Shehawy and Karim Ibrahim, the Cypriot-Russian duo of Panagiotis Nearchou and Alexander Pustovit, and the British-French tandem of Haruki Omorie Cowie and Victor Paganetti.
In the girls’ doubles, the Slovakian-British second-seeded pair of Nina Danisova and Jessica Dhome-Casanova were safely through, as were third seeds Sanne Schalekamp of the Netherlands and Erika Weil of Canada. Fourth seeds Bea Francesca Acena and Renee Marie Acena from the Philippines bowed out of further contention. Britons Ellie Aldrich and Hannah Smith were 6-1, 6-3 winners in their match.
Also making it through were the British pairing of Megan Davies and Amy Leather, the Russian-Hungarian tandem of Rosaleen Alioussef and Anna Lajos and the all-Indian teams of Hrudaya Shah and Rhea Singh along with Ruju Chauhan and Tanya Nanda.
Elsewhere yesterday, unranked qualifier Alexandre Ver Hulst of France upset fourth seed Ali Alshati (ranked 1,448th in the world) of Kuwait 6-4, 6-2 to advance to the second round of the boys’ singles. Also moving forward was sixth seed Essa Qabazard (1,456th), also of Kuwait, who defeated Hassan Baroudi (2,310th) of Syria 6-2, 6-1.
In the girls’ singles, Andra Izabella Sirbu of Romania punched her ticket into round two with a hard-earned 3-6, 6-2, 6-2 win over fellow-unranked qualifier Lea Rebreyend of France in a battle between unranked qualifiers. Andra will be joined in the next round by Saniya Masand of India, who battled back from a set down to beat Coumba Ben Mamadou Niangadou (ranked 1,910th in the world amongst girls) of Mali 6-7 (4), 6-4, 6-2.
Action continues today at the BTC hard courts from 9am and continues all the way into the evening. Play will be held in both singles and doubles. All are welcome to attend and support the players.
&uuid=(email))