Abid, Sarah land tennis titles

ISLAMABAD: Abid Ali Akbar (men) and Sarah Mehboob Khan (women) were deserving winners in the 3rd SNGPL All Pakistan Tennis Championships that concluded at the plexicushion synthetic courts here at the PTF Complex. The finals were played under floodlights.

Abid beat in-form Ahmed Choudhary 6-3, 6-4 while Sarah had to gather all her reserves to down Sara Mansoor 6-4, 5-7, 6-2. Ahmed had earlier beaten seeded players to book a place in the final but could not continue his winning run. Abid displayed quality tennis and outplayed his opponent to win the title.

Second seed Sarah Mahboob defeated top seed Sara Mansoor in a well contested three-set final that lasted almost three hours.

In the boys’ Under-16 singles final, third seed Faizan Fayaz beat second seed Hamid Israr 3-6, 6-3, 6-3 in another exciting three-set match. In the boys and girls’ Under-12 final, Hamza Roman breezed past Asad 4-1, 4-0.

More than 200 matches were played in the Rs700,000 tournament, which was the first to be organised under flood lights.

Senator S Dilawar Abbas, chairman SNGPL Board of Directors, was the chief guest. Pakistan Tennis Federation President Salim Saifullah Khan, members of the PTF management and other dignitaries were also present on the occasion.

The PTF president appreciated the efforts of the NTC coaching staff for providing high performance training to the players and expressed his pleasure over the improvement in quality of their tennis.

Tournament referee Arif Qureshi congratulated the PTF management for installation of international standard lights at the courts.