Top seed Ankita Raina made it to her third ITF final this year, defeating seventh seed Barbara Bonic of Serbia in straight sets at the Sanmar Group ITF Womens tennis championship at the Gymkhana Courts here today.
Ankita now face compatriot and sixth seed Natasha Palha, who got past qualifier Angelique Svinos of Austria at 6-2 6-2.
Though Ankita dropped her opening two service game, she matched her Serbian opponent stroke for stroke to break back immediately and level the scores 2-2 and thereafter take control of the match to lead 4-2.
She then held her next service to make it 5-2 and then broke Barbara again to clinch the o-pening set 6-2.
In the second set, a confident Ankita lead 3-1, but Barbara, who had taken a medical time out, came back strongly to break the Indian's service twice and lead 4-3.
Ankita broke back and held on to her service game to lead 5-4. Barbara served extremely well to win the next game, conceding only one point. The players traded serve breaks in the 11th and 12th games to take the set into a tiebreak.
As the match stretched, Barbara's stomache injury hampered her from hitting big serves and Ankita faced no problems as she reeled off winners on both flanks, to go ahead in the tiebreak 5-2. She then closed it out 7-3 and won the match and got herself a well deserved place in the finals.
In the other semi-final, Palha outclassed qualifier Angelique Svinos in two straight sets.
Semi-finals: Ankita Raina (IND) [1] beat Barbara Bonic (SRB) [7] 6-2 7-6(3); Natasha Palha (IND) [6] Beat Angelique Svinos (AUS) 6-2, 6-2.
