BOLTON-based Jonny Marray provided the first big upset of the Hastings Direct National Tennis Championships at Bolton Arena yesterday.
The 12-year-old from Sheffield disposed of the No.2 seeded Davis Cup player Arvind Parmar 4-6 7-5 6-3 to line up a rare meeting with his doubles partner, Yorkshire's David Sherwood, in the quarter finals tomorrow.
"David and I both train here so it's our home turf," said Marray afterwards. "We played each other once four years ago and I'm surprised we haven't come across each other more often."
Parmar, who was tipped by many to take the men's crown this term, admitted he had made too many silly errors on crucial points against his younger opponent.
"I'm very disappointed but I find him difficult to play against. He doesn't give you any rhythm. You can hold your own service game, but I didn't play well on some important points," Parmar added.
In the women draw, champion Hannah Collin from Surrey was taken to three sets by Wiltshire's Anna Hawkins, but held on for an important 6-3 4-6 6-3 victory to keep her title dreams alive.
Promising Wigan teenager Jane O'Donoghue continued her impressive charge for
the Hastings Direct honours overcoming Scotland's Karen Paterson to reach the
quarter-finals of the prestigious tournament with a 7-6 (7-5), 6-2 victory.
But O'Donoghue, who lost to Venus Williams at Wimbledon earlier this year,
was unimpressed with her own performance despite progressing another step to
a showdown with either Dorset's Anna White or Melissa Gibb, from Berkshire,
in the next phase.
"It wasn't a good performance on my part," admitted O'Donoghue. "But I'm
pleased to get through to the next round. Karen played really well and came
out all guns firing, so I'm hoping to play a bit better in the next round,
because I will have to.
"I struggled a bit with my serve and tried to serve a bit too big at times
when sometimes I didn't have to.
"No disrespect to Karen, but I didn't have to serve as hard I was doing,
because I was over-pressing a little bit.
"But that's just with confidence because I have been playing at quite a high
level and sometimes you go a little over the top. However, it's good to come
through the match - quite comfortably in the end."
O'Donoghue, who has been playing in tournaments in Italy, France and Hungary
over the last few months, is brimming with confidence that she can win the
title.
Already the Wigan player has jumped over 150 places in the rankings list.
O'Donoghue was placed 480 in her first ranking event of the year, but has now
risen to 292 after a string of impressive results.
"Now that my ranking is a little bit higher I can start to play the higher
tournaments, which will help my ranking improve even more," added O'Donoghue.
"Since Wimbledon I've been travelling quite a lot in Europe, so my ranking
has jumped up a lot, which is pleasing and hopefully it will keep going that
way. It's time for me to start making a big push.
"My aim is to be in the top 250 rankings, so I can then go out in January and
play the Australian Open qualifier, which would have been a big achievement
in a year to have come from 480.
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