Young\u00a0Victorian Destanee Aiava has won the Longines Future Tennis Aces tournament at Roland Garros, securing her chance to play alongside tennis legend Steffi Graf.
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\nAiava defeated Japan\u2019s Haruna Arakawa 4-2 5-3 in the final of the U13 international competition, an event involving 16 of the best female juniors from around the world.
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\nTwelve year old Aiava demonstrated impressive strength and determination on court straight-setting her opponents to earn a spot in the final, including victories over Switzerland\u2019s Luna Milovanovic (4-0 4-1) in the semis and tournament favourite Paula Manjon from Spain in the quarters (5-3 4-2).<\/p>\n
http:\/\/youtu.be\/CrCDFiskvVI<\/p>\n
Following the final, Aiava teamed up with Graf for an exhibition doubles match, against Haruma and current world No.13 Sabine Lisicki of Germany.
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\nDestanee, from Narre Warren in Victoria, said it was an amazing experience to win and a great honour to play alongside Longines ambassador and 22-time Grand Slam champion Graf.
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\n\u201cI like playing on clay and I feel comfortable. It was exciting to be on court with Steffi.\u201d<\/p>\n
http:\/\/youtu.be\/bYI1G0SO4Qc
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\nTennis Australia\u2019s Head of Professional Tennis Todd Woodbridge said Aiava is a great athlete with a promising future.
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\n\u201cAs Australia\u2019s top-ranked girl in her age group she\u2019s had the chance to test herself against the best in the world and come out on top. It\u2019s a fantastic result and hopefully the start of a successful career,\u201d he said.
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\nAs a result of reaching the final, Aiava will receive funding from Longines towards her tennis equipment for the next four years.<\/p>\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Young\u00a0Victorian Destanee Aiava has won the Longines Future Tennis Aces tournament at Roland Garros, securing her chance to play alongside tennis legend Steffi Graf. \u00a0 Aiava defeated Japan\u2019s Haruna Arakawa 4-2 5-3 in the final of the U13 international competition, an event involving 16 of the best female juniors from around the world. \u00a0 Twelve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5907,"featured_media":6861,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5907"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6860\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}