Maheta, Bhatia made to work their way into final

NEW DELHI: Calm, confident and patient, that’s how one could describe Eetee Maheta on Friday afternoon. It’s never easy to play against a tough competitor like Pranjala Yadlapalli but Maheta matched her shot for shot, refusing to buckle under pressure from the 17-year-old, who has been making waves on the junior circuit the past year.

With a 6-4, 6-3 victory, the 20-yearold from Gujarat made the Fenesta Open national championship final to set up a date with Riya Bhatia. With four-time champion Prerna Bhambri not playing, the 22nd edition will have a new women’s winner.

On the men’s side, the 2014 champion Vishnu Vardhan will have a chance to regain the title he lost last year when he plays Siddharth Vishwakarma in the final on Saturday at the DLTA Complex. Maheta, who recently won her first title (an Asian Tennis Tour event in early September) has been playing in Egypt in $10000 events the past month, making the singles quarters in two and the doubles semis in one.

While the fourth seeded Yadlapalli’s impatience got the better of her, Maheta countered the youngster’s strong baseline game with power and finesse. With the prestigious national title at stake, standing in the sixth seed’s way is Bhatia, who took over three hours to toil past the unseeded Sharrmadaa Baluu 6-3, 5-7, 7-6(5).

The match saw long rallies and a lot of shouts after committing unforced errors. Baluu was playing with no expectations after recently recovering from an ankle injury. She was leading 3-0 in the first set before Bhatia came back to win the next six games and the first set. The Karnataka player again had a 5-1 lead in the second before squandering it, giving the Delhi player a chance to equalise 5-5. The former Fed Cup player refused to give up as she levelled the set scores.