The top-seeded pairing of Tuana Tinaztepe and Oceane Babel set up a mouth-watering clash against second seeds Nina Danisova and Jessica Dhome-Casanova last night for the girls’ doubles crown in the 10th Bahrain ITF Juniors Championships 2018 at Bahrain Tennis Club (BTC).
Battling in the boys’ doubles final will be the fourth-seeded duo of Christopher Fok Kow of Mauritius and Rahul Jaideep of India and the all-Egyptian tandem of Abd Elrahman Hassan and Youssef Nabil.
Following yesterday’s results, Nina and Hassan are the only two players who still have a chance to claim two titles in the tournament, as they both also advanced to the semi-finals of their respective singles competitions.
Tuana and Oceane overcame a tough challenge to book their berth in their final. The Turkish-French pair shrugged off a poor start to defeat the third-seeded Dutch-Canadian duo of Sanne Schalekamp and Erika Weil in a nail-biting super tie-break 1-6, 6-4, 11-9.
“It feels very nice to get this win,” said Tuana. “In the first set, we lost 1-6 and I was telling myself, ‘What are we doing? We must win this match to go to the final.’
“The super tie-break was very close and I felt a lot of stress. We told each other to just hit and play our game. The difference was just a few balls and some luck, and because of how close it was it feels so amazing to win.”
Nina and Jessica advanced to the title match with a 6-2, 7-6 (5) straight-sets win over the all-British tandem of Ellie Aldrich and Hannah Smith. They will be hoping to beat their higher-ranked rivals in the final, which is scheduled for today afternoon, not before 3pm at BTC.
“We tried to play the best we can today and keep fighting until the end,” Nina said following their doubles win. “It was really hard but we did it somehow, and even though Jessica and I are competing as a doubles paring for the first time, we play well together and we hope we can do it in the final.”
In the boys’ doubles, Fok Kow and Jaideep posted the upset of the day after taking down top seeds Charles Barry of Ireland and Matthew Rutter of Great Britain in a super tie-break 5-7, 6-3, 10-6. Joining them in the final will be Hassan and Nabil, who beat the unseeded French pair of Romain Gales and William Jucha 7-6 (4), 6-4.
The boys’ doubles final will take place not before 5.30pm today.
Meanwhile, in the girls’ singles, sixth-seeded Nina (ranked 1,127th amongst girls in the world) ended the dream run of unseeded Lou Baudouin (2,390th) of France and will now face fourth seed Sanne (949th) in the final four. The other semi-final will be an all-British affair between unseeded players Ellie (2,749th) and Hannah (1,976th).
In the boys’ singles, number one seed Saud Alhaqbani (ranked 706th in the world amongst boys) of Saudi Arabia will take on Frenchman, Victor Paganetti (1,975th) in one semi-final.
The other will be contested between second seed Barry (723rd) and Hassan (1,668th).
Both girls’ singles semi-finals are scheduled for 10am starts, along with the boys’ match between Hassan and Barry. Alhaqbani and Paganetti clash not before 1pm.
&uuid=(email))