India’s top-ranked tennis player Ankita Raina on Sunday won the $25,000 ITF tournament in Gwalior after beating France’s Amandine Hesse in straight sets.
The fourth-seeded Indian beat the second-seeded Frenchwoman 6-2, 7-5 in a match that lasted an hour and 25 minutes. Doing so, Raina avenged her loss to Hesse in the $125,000 Mumbai Open last year.
Hesse, ranked 216 in the world, faltered with her first serves in the final, getting only 52% of them in while Raina was far more accurate with 80%. The 25-year-old Indian, ranked 255th in the world, also remained unbroken throughout the final.
This was Raina’s first final of the 2018 season and she ended it with a trophy. Her cause was helped by the fact that her semi-final opponent, Yana Sizikova, had retired from the match with dizziness after trailing 2-6, 0-4. Raina had even received a walkover from USA’s Monica Robinson in the quarter-finals.
Raina has progressively worked her way up the ITF circuit after starting in 2009. She has now won six singles titles and done well in China, one of the toughest places to succeed in Asia. She has also played during the grass-court season in Europe, with Porsche Open being one the highlights.