Donna packs off Kyra in ITF tennis championship

Bangalore, March 23 (IANS) Croatian teenager Donna Vekic stopped the dream run of Indian wild card Kyra Shroff with a 6-1, 7-6 (4) win in the semifinals and set up a title clash with fourth seeded Andrea Koch-Benvenuto of Chile who beat second seed Akiko Omae of Japan 6-3, 6-4 in the $25,000 QNet ITF Open women's tennis championship here Friday.

Kyra and Donna treated the Ugadi holiday crowd to some superb tennis. If Donna was consistent with her big serve and solid groundstrokes, Kyra pulled off some stunning returns to rattle the Croatian ranked 392 in the World.

Donna was quicker of the two on the court and was quick to capitalize on any little chance that came her way while Kyra was clearly unlucky, especially in the second set, where she led 4-1, only to lose control of the tie and couple of decisions too went against her.

Kyra held the serve only once in the first game of the first set as Donna broke her thrice with relative ease in the third, fifth and seventh games to sew up the set at 6-1.

Stung by that reverse, Kyra came back strongly in the second set with some amazing returns which skimmed the tramlines. She broke Donna in the third and fifth games for 4-1 lead.

However, Donna waged a relentless fightback and broke Kyra in the sixth with Indian committing two double faults. Donna went on to win the next four games to clinch the issue even as Kyra turned error-prone.

"I was hoping to take this tie into a decider and things could have been different then. Yes, I felt some decisions went against me. Overall, I think I played a good event here and justified the wild card given to me.

"This performance has given me a lot of confidence for the future," said Kyra while Donna complimented her rival for a good show.

"I am glad to be in final and playing pretty well here and hope to carry the momentum in the final too. Kyra was amazing with some of her returns and was quite unbelievable at times," said Donna.

In the other semi-finals, Andrea, ranked 279, played an aggressive game to stun Akiko. After a rather shaky start when she made numerous unforced errors and lost the first set at 3-6, Akiko came up with a solid display in the second set which was saw some sparkling rallies.

After both held their serves till 4-4, Andrea went into a 5-4 lead on her serve and then Akiko dropped the serve in the 10th game to lose the set and match.

Later, Tamaryn Hendler (BEL) and Melanie Klaffner (AUT) beat Indian pair of Rushmi Chakravarthi and Ankita Raina 7-5, 5-7, 10-2, for the doubles title.