Siblings Angela Okutoyi and Roselida Asumwa staged a remarkable comeback to reach the second round of the International Tennis Federation (ITF) World Tour event at Peponi School, yesterday.
The two were facing Mariana Galvao (Brazil) and Adi Gavish (Israel) in the first round of the doubles and looked headed for 4-0 in the second set before making the comeback.
But incredibly, the two not only pulled themselves back into the set but turned it around completely to win 7-6, 6-4. It was, however, a different story in the other doubles matches as the duo of Faith Nyabera and Judy Nkatha lost on a super tie break 5-7, 6-2, 10-5 to Indian duo of Manju Prasad and Avika Sagwal.
In the Okutoyi-Asumwa match, with their opponents comfortably set to seal the second set in the fifth game and force a super tie break, luck changed into Kenya’s favour as an overhead smash clipped the net cord and landed out.
From there, the 15-year-old sisters held serve and rallied in spectacular fashion, winning the set to the jubilation of the few fans who turned up.
The Kenyans looked creaky during the first set and had trouble returning their opponents missile-like forehands. They were behind 3-1 but then came back to life, playing incredible tennis to lead 4-3, 5-4 before winning 7-6. “We expected them to be strong opponents but we didn’t expect the match to be this tough,” Okutoyi said.
In the second double match, Indian pair of Prasad and Sagwal came from a set down to knock out the Kenyans on tie break. After falling 3-1 in the first set, the Kenyans went on to lead 5-4 before winning 7-5.
The Indians were, however, too strong in the second set where they denied Kenyans any scoring opportunities and levelled the sets. In the set, Kenyans took a 1-0 before tying 2-2 but that is as far as they could go before losing 6-2. The tiebreaker was dominated by Prasad and Sagwal with Kenyan even giving out two points on double faults. In an earlier all Kenyan affair singles match, Nkatha beat Nyabera 7-5, 6-4 to advance to the second round.
