India’s Mahak Jain retained the International Tennis Federation (IFT) World Tennis Tour when she beat Burundian Sada Nahimana in straight set at Peponi School on Sunday afternoon.
Jain romped into a second successive win of the Kenyan leg of the event with a 6-1, 6-1 win in one hour four minutes.
The two had clashed in the first leg of the event with the match going into the third set with the Indian carrying the day 2-1.
But Sunday, in a repeat final, local fans were left disappointed as the match turned out to be a one-sided affair with the Indian proving that last week’s win was not a fluke and she was the tournament’s top seed on merit.
Nahimana who beat the tournament’s second seed in the first round played a catch throughout the match as Jain didn’t allow her to settle.
From the opening three matches of the first set, which Jain won comfortably, it was clear that the Burundian will have to work hard to win the title.
Jain depended mostly on her backhand strength any attempts from Nahimana of fighting back.
After going down 3-0 in the first set, Nahimana bounced back to score a win in the fourth match but that is the best she could get in the set as Jain exhausted her opponents with some brilliantly played rallies.
However, Jain had to play her heart out in the sixth game to extend her lead to 5-1. Nahimana had taken a 40-0 lead but an extraordinary comeback from her enabled her to win and probably drain off the East and Central Africa top-ranked player.
The second set started in the same tempo as the end of the first one with Jain taking a 2-0 lead despite Nahimana having controlled the second game.
Nahimana managed to recover from the disappointment of losing out the second game by holding on a good start of the third game to win.
But Jain hit back by winning the fourth game without allowing Nahimana to score any point.
Nahimana didn’t give up that easily and tried to salvage something in the match by bagging a few points but the workload seemed too huge for her-making few crucial mistakes and this allowed the Indian to retain the title.
