Maverick Banes has fought off American Jarmere Jenkins to take the Tennis Wollongong International title on Sunday.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s my first title in Australia and my first for two years, so it\u2019s really good to get that one,\u201d Banes said.<\/p>\n
The Queenslander\u00a0was staring down the barrel after Jenkins, the fourth seed, took the opening set in a tiebreaker and served for the match at 5-3. However, he managed to secure the break back and from that point on went from strength to strength, eventually prevailing 6-7(6) 7-5 6-2.<\/p>\n
\u201cI played a good game and was able to get back into it,\u201d Banes said of that critical stage of the match. \u201cEvery player thinks about the finish line whether they like or not, and being a final there\u2019s some extra pressure, so I knew that if I made him plays balls he might give me a little sniff, which he did, and I was able to capitalise and then get on top early in the third set after that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Banes entered the final having lost all four previous encounters with Jenkins, including a recent defeat in Brisbane, but said he felt like he had had chances every time they played.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was pretty confident going in that if I played well I could definitely stick with him,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Banes, 24, has been a consistent performer on the Australian Pro Tour this year, with his best results a quarterfinal appearance in both Alice Springs and Cairns.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been close this year,\u201d he said. \u201cBut beating Blake (Mott, the tournament\u2019s top seed) on Friday gave me a bit more belief.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe last two times I\u2019ve been in Wollongong I\u2019ve made a semi and a final, so it\u2019s always been a pretty good tournament for me,\u201d he added. \u201cI like the speed of the courts and the club does a really good job with the players, so it\u2019s pretty enjoyable to come and play here.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll that together just works for me, I guess.\u201d<\/p>\n
Banes will now travel to Blacktown next week to compete in the final event on this year\u2019s Australian Pro Tour calendar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Maiden home soil success for fifth seed Maverick Banes as he edges out American Jarmere Jenkins in Wollongong on Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5788,"featured_media":12260,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5788"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}