Ankita set for double

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Pune girl Ankita Raina set herself up for a title double in the $10,000 ITF women’s tennis tournament being played at Delhi’s DLTA complex.

The 19-year-old pocketed the doubles’ crown teaming up with Aishwarya Agarwal and will also feature in the final of the singles.
In Friday’s morning session, Ankita got the better of another Pune girl and senior national champion Rutuja Bhonsale 7-5, 6-4 in the singles semi-final.
She later returned and combined with Aishwarya to beat Ester Masuri of Israel and Naomi Totka of Hungary 6-1, 6-4 for the doubles title.
This is Ankita’s third successive doubles title in Delhi and her fourth in two months.
“I won the earlier two doubles titles with Rushmi (Chakravarty). But this time I was playing with a new partner and I am happy that I still managed to come up with the same result,” said Ankita, a student of BMCC college.
Ankita, who trains under Hemant Bendrey at the PYC Gymkhana, credited another coach and mental trainer Debashree Marathe for her brilliant run in the singles.
“I was very low on confidence at the start of the year and had long sessions with the mental trainer, who first suggested that I focus on winning the doubles and results will start coming in singles.”
Ankita, who thrashed top seeded Anja Prislan of Slovenia in the quarter-finals, was slow to get off the blocks in her singles semi-finals and lost her opening serve in the second game but came back in the very next game breaking Rutuja’s serve.
The players traded a couple of breaks before Ankita pocketed the first set by breaking Rutuja in the 11th game and then held serve.
The second set also followed a similar pattern but Ankita once again came up on top to set up a clash against compatriot Prerna Bhambri for the championship.