TENNIS – SACHA Fontanges of France upset third seed Petr Lifanov of Russia yesterday in the boys’ singles first round of the J30 Isa Town International Tennis Federation (ITF) tournament, which got underway at the Bahrain Tennis Federation (BTF) courts in Isa Town.
The competition is a part of the ITF World Tennis Tour Juniors 2025 calendar.
Sacha needed to dig deep to take down his highly rated opponent 7-6 (6), 7-5 in a tightly contested encounter.
Amongst the seeded players who joined Sacha and went through to round two yesterday were fifth seed Artem Svetlov of Russia and seventh seed Georgio Bidan of Lebanon. Artem beat Yunusbek Serikuly 6-0, 6-3, while Georgio was a 6-1, 6-4 winner against Hao Yi Zhang of China.
Also making it through from the first day of action were Oscar Casas Mas of Spain, Kaushik Arunkumar of India, and Russians Nikita Berdin and Artem Starikov.
In the girls’ singles, second seed Leanne Abouhamad of Australia beat Alexandra Talina 6-3, 6-2 to make it out of the opening stage.
Also advancing were fourth seed Milana Kolesova, fifth seed Katsiaryan Dubik, and eighth seed Daria Podlipskaya, all from Russia, and sixth seed Ema Chladova of the Czech Republic.
Others to win yesterday were Amani Azarkan of Denmark, Yasemin Elselmeier of Turkey, Camilla Mizzi of Italy, and Daniela Esina of Russia.
Singles matches are scheduled to continue today from 10am until the afternoon, while action in both the boys’ and girls’ doubles categories are also set to begin not before 12noon. All are welcome to attend and watch the action. Entry to the BTF is free.
This week’s J30 Isa Town tournament continues until Saturday. It will be followed by another J30 ITF competition from Monday next week to February 15. The name J30 reflects the number of ranking points awarded to the singles winner of an ITF juniors tournament.
patrick@gdnmedia.bh
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