Hourigan ray of hope for women’s game

Kiwi women’s tennis gets a good news story at last, writes Radio NZ’s Jamie Wall.

IT might have been on the back court in front of a couple of dozen fans, but the success of Paige Hourigan and her doubles partner, Taylor Townsend, is definitely worth talking about.

The women’s game in New Zealand has lurched from bad to much worse in a year’s time, so this ray of hope couldn’t have come at a better time.

At last year’s tournament, the only Kiwi woman to make the main singles draw was Jade Lewis, who was comprehensively beaten by then world No 138 Viktoria Kuzmova 64, 63.

Lewis has since quit the sport to focus on her studies.

Just before Christmas, Marina Erakovic also announced she was pulling the pin on her career.

Erakovic can look back on her time with some pride, though, reaching a top singles ranking of 39 and being a feature on the WTA tour since 2005.

The best run she ever had at her home tournament was a losing doubles final in 2011.

After Lewis’ disappointing showing, it was hard to blame tournament organisers for handing their three available wildcards to foreigners.

However, thanks to Hourigan and Townsend’s inspired comeback, we’re not just cutting, pasting and slightly updating our articles from last year.

The duo prevailed 36, 61, 108 over Australian duo Monique Adamczak and Jessica Moore.

While neither of those two names will have tennis fans gasping in disbelief, it now means that there will at least be a Kiwi presence on centre court at the business end of the tournament.

The magnitude of that is not lost on Hourigan.

‘‘I’m super happy. [Taylor] is playing incredible; she’s super solid and hopefully we can keep it going,’’ the 21yearold said.

‘‘It’s so easy for me to relax and play better when Taylor’s there.’’

After dropping the first set, the pair struck back hard to blitz the Australians in the second. Hourigan found herself serving for the match in the third set supertiebreak.

‘‘On my serve I was confident. When I knew it was my serve, I knew we had this point. I was feeling it.’’