{"id":12642,"date":"2017-11-16T13:26:08","date_gmt":"2017-11-16T02:26:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/?p=12642"},"modified":"2017-11-16T13:31:31","modified_gmt":"2017-11-16T02:31:31","slug":"balodis-and-raftery-win-world-title","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/news\/2017\/11\/16\/balodis-and-raftery-win-world-title","title":{"rendered":"Balodis and Raftery win World Title"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Canberra&#8217;s\u00a0<b>Ros Balodis<\/b>\u00a0and\u00a0<b>Narelle Raftery<\/b>\u00a0have teamed up with <strong>Leanne Swaysland\u00a0<\/strong>(NSW) and\u00a0<strong>Wanda Howes\u00a0<\/strong>(VIC)\u00a0to lead Australia to victory in the Women&#8217;s 55+\u00a0<b>Maureen Connelly Cup\u00a0<\/b>at the\u00a0<b>ITF World Teams Championships<\/b>\u00a0in Miami, Florida.<\/p>\n<p>Balodis and Raftery played at the number 1 and 2 singles positions respectively, with Australia posting round robin wins over the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Sweden to progress to the knockout stage. \u00a0In the semifinals against Italy, Balodis and Raftery both won hard fought three set victories to send Australia to the decider against Germany. \u00a0After Raftery dropped the opening singles, Balodis levelled the tie with a 6-4 7-5 victory over\u00a0<strong>Helga Nauck<\/strong> (GER). \u00a0Balodis then combined with Swaysland to win the doubles and claim the Maureen Connolly Cup for the second consecutive year.<\/p>\n<p>Canberra&#8217;s other representative\u00a0<strong>Leonie Ainsworth\u00a0<\/strong>helped the Australian team to finish in 5th place in the Women&#8217;s 60+\u00a0<strong>Alice Marble Cup.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Australian Men&#8217;s 60+ team also won gold, taking out the\u00a0<strong>Vonn Cramm Cup.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In the<strong> ITF Seniors World Individual Championships<\/strong> Balodis then teamed up with Swaysland in the Women&#8217;s 55+ Doubles to win gold, her twelfth doubles gold medal. \u00a0After surviving a scare in the opening round, the pair won their semifinal in straight sets before a convincing 6-3 6-1 win over Argentina&#8217;s\u00a0<strong>Beatriz Villaverde\u00a0<\/strong>and\u00a0<strong>Marcela Voyame\u00a0<\/strong>in the final.<\/p>\n<p>More than 25 players from Australia travelled to the US to compete in the ITF Senior World Individual Championships. The Individual Championships are the highest ranked ITF Seniors event on the calendar and sees more than 500 players from more than 30 countries compete across three age categories 50-and-over, 55-and-over, and 60-and-over.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Canberra&#8217;s\u00a0Ros Balodis\u00a0and\u00a0Narelle Raftery\u00a0have teamed up with Leanne Swaysland\u00a0(NSW) and\u00a0Wanda Howes\u00a0(VIC)\u00a0to lead Australia to victory in the Women&#8217;s 55+\u00a0Maureen Connelly Cup\u00a0at the\u00a0ITF World Teams Championships\u00a0in Miami, Florida. Balodis and Raftery played at the number 1 and 2 singles positions respectively, with Australia posting round robin wins over the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Sweden to progress to the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5789,"featured_media":12650,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5789"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12642\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}