Amritha beats Katie in women’s singles

Chris Dhambarage

Sri Lanka’s Amritha Muttiah cleared her first hurdle in a spectacular manner as she defeated Gouyette Katie from Jersey in the opening round of the women’s singles tennis tournament at the third Commonwealth Youth Games which commenced at the Shiv Chhatrapati Sports Complex in Balewadi, Pune India yesterday.

The unseeded player got her act together well from the start and powered her way to a convincing straight set 6-1, 6-1 victory in just under one hour.

In fact Muttiah took the first set in 23 minutes and added the finishing touches by taking the second set in 31 minutes. Muttiah won a total of 25 points in the first set and a further 30 in the second set while completely outplaying her opponent. She had only 18 unforced errors during the entire contest in contrast to her opponent who committed a total of 44 mistakes.

Muttiah collected a total of 18 first server points and eight second server points and was also successful in converting six break points. She will now take on the ninth seeded Bayliss Sian from Wales in the second round.Meanwhile Sri Lanka’s 12th seed Jithmi Jayawickrema will launch her campaign today with a match against Maeva Puetu of the Coke Islands.

Jade Windley of England is the top seed in this tournament and India¢s Poojashree Venkatesha is the bottom seed.