Japan's Morita lifts women’s tennis title

Kolkata, Nov 22: Japan's Ayumi Morita kept her domination intact to carve out an emphatic straight set win over Romania's Elora Dabija and win the title at the Gujarat NRE Coke USD 50,000 ITF Women's Challenger tennis tournament here Saturday.

Second seed Morita, who has not dropped a single set throughout the tourney, breezed past the unseeded Romanian in only 79 minutes 6-3, 6-1 on the synthetic surface at the Bengal Tennis Association Complex.

The opening set saw a solitary break in the eighth game when Morita exploited Dabija's erratic serves to demolish her. Dabija served two double faults in the game.

Morita closed the set in 38 minutes by taking the next game with an ace.

In the second set, Dabija lost serve in the first, third and seventh games. However, she tried to put up a fight in the second and sixth games, stretching Morita on her serve.

The second game saw Morita come back from a break, while the sixth went on for as many as half a dozen deuces.

Ayumi won $7,315 (nearly Rs.307,000) and 35 ITF points while Elora got $3,990 (nearly Rs.167,600) and 25 ITF points.

--IANS