Chuang packs off Bhambri

Top seed Chia-Jung Chuang of the Chinese Taipei cleaned up the Indian challenge in the Bank of Baroda ITF women's tennis tournament when she overcame a stiff challenge from seventh seed Ankita Bhambri in  the singles semi-finals in New Delhi on Friday.

Chuang got the better of Bhambri 7-6 (7/3), 6-4 in one hour 18 minutes to set up a summit clash with Jie Hao of China.

The unseeded Chinese defeated fifth seed Montinee Tangphong of Thailand 6-4, 6-2 to enter her second successive final.

As the scoreline indicates, the semi-final between Bhambri and Chuang was a keenly contested encounter with both players matching each other and playing long rallies in the bargain.

But the major difference between the duo, which eventually mattered in the result, was the better first serve percentage of the top seed as she hardly came under pressure in her service games.

In the first set, both the players held their serve forcing a tiebreak, which Chuang won with relative ease.

The second set also went on the same lines till the ninth game but the Indian, who was serving to stay in the match in the tenth game, made some unforced errors under pressure to lose her serve and the tie.

In the other semi-final, Hao adopted an aggressive approach against the fifth seed to break her opponent in the very first game. But the Chinese could not hold on to her serve in the next to draw level.

However, she again broke Tangpong in the fifth game and then went on to hold her serve to take the set.

The second set was a one-sided affair as Hao won four consecutive games after both of them had shared the first  four.