{"id":7343,"date":"2015-06-23T10:27:17","date_gmt":"2015-06-23T00:27:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/?p=7343"},"modified":"2015-06-23T10:27:17","modified_gmt":"2015-06-23T00:27:17","slug":"balodis-wins-singles-and-doubles-world-titles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/news\/2015\/06\/23\/balodis-wins-singles-and-doubles-world-titles","title":{"rendered":"Balodis wins singles and doubles World titles"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/files\/2015\/06\/Ros-Balodis-Photo-Website.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-7344\" src=\"http:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/files\/2015\/06\/Ros-Balodis-Photo-Website.jpg\" alt=\"Ros Balodis Photo Website\" width=\"405\" height=\"297\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Canberra\u2019s Ros Balodis has taken out the Women\u2019s 55+ singles and doubles titles at the 2015 ITF Seniors World Individual Championships in La Baule, France.\u00a0\u00a0 Balodis stormed through the singles draw, winning the title without losing a set, while in the doubles she combined with Leanne Swaysland to take out their fourth consecutive world title.<\/p>\n<p>Heading into the championships, Balodis was ranked 5<sup>th<\/sup> in the world and seeded 3 in the tournament. She made light work of her early rounds dropping just 1 game in her first 3 matches to breeze through to the final four. In the semi finals Balodis lined up against number 2 seed, Barbora Koutna of the Czech Republic, defeating her 6-3, 6-3 to move into the championship match. Balodis\u2019 opponent in the final was defending champion and world number 1 Christine French of Great Britain. Unfortunately, French tore a pectoral muscle in the 3<sup>rd<\/sup> game and was forced to serve underarm for part of the first set. The injury proved too much for French, and she retired after Balodis took the first set 6-1.<\/p>\n<p>In the doubles, Balodis combined with NSW\u2019s Leanne Swaysland to take out an impressive fourth consecutive world title. With such a dominant record, the pair went into the tournament as the number 1 seeds. They comfortably moved through to the final, dropping only 8 games in 3 matches. The final would prove to be a closely contested battle, as they faced number 2 seeds Christine French (GBR) and Susan Wright (USA). Balodis and Swaysland dominated the first set 6-1, however French and Wright fought back to take the 2<sup>nd<\/sup> 6-4. Balodis and Swaysland proved too strong in the 3<sup>rd<\/sup> set super tiebreak, taking it 10-2.<\/p>\n<p>Prior to the individual championships, Balodis also played a vital role in Australia making the finals of the Maureen Connolly Cup. As the number 4 seeds, the Australian\u2019s were dominate in the round robin stages, defeating Germany, Switzerland, and Turkey 3-0. In the semis, the Australian\u2019s upset number 1 seeds the USA, 2-1, with Balodis winning both her singles and doubles matches. In the final, the Aussies came up against a strong French team, who took both the singles to take the title 2-1 over the Australians.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Canberra\u2019s Ros Balodis has taken out the Women\u2019s 55+ singles and doubles titles at the 2015 ITF Seniors World Individual Championships in La Baule, France.\u00a0\u00a0 Balodis stormed through the singles draw, winning the title without losing a set, while in the doubles she combined with Leanne Swaysland to take out their fourth consecutive world title. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5910,"featured_media":7344,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7343","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\/7343","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\/5910"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}