Kooyong’s Andrew Whittington has continued his fantastic run of recent form by winning the singles and doubles titles at the Cambodian Futures event in Phnom Penh over the weekend.
Andrew’s victory will see his ranking rise to around 375 as he approaches the Australian Open Wildcard Playoff set to be played at Melbourne Park next week.
The week started well with a 7/6 6/0 win over Korea’s Hyun-Woo Nam which was quickly followed up with a dominant 6/2 6/0 victory over another Korean, Byung-Kook Kang, to move into the quarterfinals.
Facing his third Korean opponent in a row, Andrew was challenged but responded well to book his spot in the semi finals with a 6/1 3/6 6/1 win over Dylan Seong-Kwan Kim.
The semi final was a big encounter with former world number 77 Danai Udomchoke who had defeated the top seed in the previous round but Andrew flew out of the blocks to claim the first set 6/1.
Udomchoke wasn’t to be outdone as he fought back into the match by taking the second set 6/4 to send it into a decider.
Andrew then dug deep to claim one of the biggest scalps of his career as he fought off the challenge of Udomchoke to win the match 6/1 4/6 6/4 and book his spot in the final against fellow Australian and doubles partner, Gavin Van Peperzeel.
And it was Van Peperzeel who jumped out of the blocks well in the final to take an early break which allowed him to serve for the set at 5/4 but Andrew remained calm and broke back to level the match before reeling off several winners to break again and take the set 7/5.
It was all plain sailing from there as Andrew flew through the second set to win his second title in the past few months 7/5 6/0 on top of also winning the doubles title with Van Peperzeel 6/3 3/6 10/7 to top off a great week.
Andrew’s attention will now turn to the Australian Open Wildcard Playoff and hopefully his fantastic form can carry over into this very important and prestigious tournament.
