Kooyong’s Destanee Aiava has gone through the Asia/Oceania qualifying rounds of the World Teams Championships in India undefeated in singles to help her side finish third to book a spot in the finals later this year in the Czech Republic.
The Australian girls started with three very strong wins in the group stage over Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan to move into the quarterfinals and a meeting with the fourth seeds from Japan.
Both Destanee and Jeanette Lin showed their class in this match to win comfortably in their singles matches to move into the semi final against the third seeded China.
China had disposed of New Zealand in impressive fashion the previous day and again came out firing as the Chinese number two defeated Lin 7/5 6/3 to put the pressure back on the Australians but Destanee again showed she was a class above with a 6/2 6/1 victory.
This left it down to the doubles and Destanee and Jeanette won the first set in a tiebreaker before the Chinese pair fought back into the match to level it at a set apiece. The Chinese continued their good form in the final set to win the semi final and move through to the final.
In the playoff for third, the Australian girls swept India aside to finish on a high note and will no doubt be looking to get some revenge when they travel to the Czech Republic in August.
Kooyong’s Greg Polmans and Codey Gunn were part of the boy’s team that also recently travelled to India for the World Teams Championships Qualifying event but unfortunately they fell at the quarterfinal stage after a strong showing in the group stage where they defeated Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Indonesia.
Thailand proved to be too strong in the quarterfinals where both Polmans and Stefan Norodom lost their singles matches.
They then played India where Codey and Greg split their singles, with Greg having a win, before the Indian pair proved to be too strong for Polmans and Norodom.
This moved the boys into the playoff for seventh and eighth which they proceeded to win over Indonesia, who they had beaten in the group stages. Both Greg and Stefan won their singles matches to leave the boys finishing in seventh place.
Congratulations to the girls who now look forward to the finals in early August!
