Sparsh champion

Sparsh Parmar stunned second seed Jaber Abdul A’al to clinch the Boys 12 years and under singles title following a 6-3, 6-0 victory yesterday in the RJ Investment Holding Juniors Open Tennis Championship organised by the Bahrain Tennis Club at its premises in Juffair.

A break in the opening game gave Sparsh an early lead and a second in the third game gave him a 3-0 lead.

After a hard fought fourth game Jaber effected a break, but the next four games all went with a break of service for Sparsh to take a 5-3 lead and then hold serve to clinch the first set 6-3. The second set was settled quite quickly as the ‘new boy’ on the tennis block in Bahrain dominated proceedings to win 6-0 without dropping a game.

Sparsh, who eliminated top seed Ali Al Sharif in the first round has been in Bahrain just over a month and the 10-year old originally from Gujarat in India said, “It was a nice win after I won my first title last week at the Bahrain Tennis Federation Junior Championship.”

Jaber a 12 year old student at Khalid bin Waleed School said “I’m disappointed at losing in the final against a good opponent but he played well.”

In other action, the Boys singles 18 years and under got underway with Rico Cifra defeating Mohammed Al Shaikh 6-0, 6-1 and Yousef Dhaif getting the better of Osama Skinner 6-2, 6-3.

In other matches played, Yousef Ashraf was a 6-1, 6-2 winner over Saleh Al Mattar and Hassan Al Qatan beat Omar Capton retired with the score at 4-6.

Walkover wins were received by Hamad Abdul A’al and Mahmood Dhaif against Hazim Al Aswad and Farnk Li respectively.

The girls 18 years and under singles final is scheduled today at 4.30pm with Alex Aleina taking on Nader Nazly and the boys 18 years and under quarter finals are also being played from 4pm. All category winners will receive a free subscription at the health club of Al Areen Palace and Spa and free entry tickets to the Lost Paradise of Dilmun Water Park and many other prizes.