Canberra’s Ros Balodis has completed a clean sweep at the 36th Seniors World Championships in Helsinki, Finland.\u00a0 After leading Australia to victory in the Maureen Connelly Cup, Balodis backed up to claim victory in the Women’s 55 Individual Singles and Doubles Championships.<\/p>\n
Balodis headed into the championships as a strong favourite with an impressive six individual crowns to her name and the current world number one in her age group.\u00a0 After breezing through her opening round without losing a game, she faced a tough test from America’s Vicki Buholz, winning a tight match 7-5, 6-4.\u00a0 After posting a convincing quarter final win, she defeated Austria’s Ingrid Resch 6-3, 6-4 in the semis to set up a final against fellow Australian and double’s partner, Leanne Swaysland.\u00a0 Balodis dominated the final, winning it without dropping a game.\u00a0 Balodis then teamed up with Swaysland to take out the 55’s Women’s doubles title, over second seeds,\u00a0Buholz and Susan Wright.<\/p>\n
The previous week, Balodis led the Australian team to victory in the ITF Seniors Teams\u00a0Maureen Connelly Cup event.\u00a0 Joined by\u00a0Swaysland, Wanda Howes, and Fiona Walker, the Australian team defeated top seeds the USA 2-1 in the semifinals, with Balodis\u00a0winning both her singles and doubles.\u00a0 In the final, Swaysland got Australia off to a great start against Italy\u00a0taking the opening rubber in 3 sets.\u00a0 Balodis then posted a 6-1, 6-3 victory to seal the title for the Australian’s.<\/p>\n
Fellow Canberran, Narelle Raftery\u00a0also performed strongly at the ITF World Individual and Teams Championships.\u00a0 In the 50’s Women’s singles event, Raftery won through to the quarter finals before falling 6-1, 6-4 to 5th seed, Petra Doubusch from Germany.\u00a0 She also combined with the USA’s Shelly Works to make the quarter of the 50’s doubles before going down to eventual champions and fellow Aussies Brenda Foster and Jill Meggs.\u00a0 Raftery combined with Martin Warwick to also make the quarters of the mixed doubles.<\/p>\n
In the Maria Ester Bueno teams event, Raftery joined Foster, Meggs, and Dianne Cassel to finish in 7th position<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Canberra’s Ros Balodis has completed a clean sweep at the 36th Seniors World Championships in Helsinki, Finland.\u00a0 After leading Australia to victory in the Maureen Connelly Cup, Balodis backed up to claim victory in the Women’s 55 Individual Singles and Doubles Championships. Balodis headed into the championships as a strong favourite with an impressive six […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5789,"featured_media":8987,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8981","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\/8981","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=8981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8981\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}