Ali Thameem
Seventeen-year-old Maldivian tennis player Aaraa Aasal Azim and her partner Tarita Hongsyok are girls’ doubles champions of the ITF Maldives Junior Open, a J30-level tournament of the International Tennis Federation.
Aara and Tarita won the final with a commanding 6-2, 6-1 this evening, against Seunghyun Cho (Korea) and Yishan Xu (China). The runner-up duo was the fourth seed in the girls’ doubles. The game started at four in the evening and took just one hour to be decided.
This is the third international gold medal Aara has won in the past nine months. She previously won back-to-back ATF tournaments, played at home court in the Maldives last December.
Aaraa and Tarita, who were seeded second in the main draw, faced a French-Russian duo; Eva-Vlada Anicina-Dzhygurda and Elizaveta Privalova, in yesterday’s semifinals. Her opponents were the 3rd seed in the doubles. The semifinal was also decided in two sets: 6-1 and 7-5.
The champion pair’s journey at the ITF Maldives Open started with a 6-1, 6-2 win against Wijewardana (Sri Lanka) and Phitchayapak Srimuk (Thailand) in the first round.
Aara’s pair then faced Maldivians Nayara Usama Ali and Naba Nishan in Wednesday’s quarterfinals. Aara and Tarita won the game 6-1, 6-4, knocking out her Maldivian peers.
