Balwyn United’s Sanish Ambekar and New South Wales’ Yangzi Liu have each won their third Open title of the year. The pair defeated Croydon’s Nicholas Lum and Lina Lei in the Open Men’s and Women’s Singles Finals at the 2021 Victorian Open Championships on Sunday. 

Ambekar continued his red-hot form coming in as the top seed before going undefeated through his group stage matches. He fought his way past Samuel Von Einem, Xavier Dixon (Loops) and David Powell (Croydon) on his way to the final against Lum. The Croydon young gun had Ambekar on the back foot before the former Indian national player came back to take out the final two games of the seven set match and win the title with an edge that just caught the back of the table.

Number one seed Yangzi Liu dropped a solitary game during her group stage matches to move on to the final bracket undefeated. She knocked out Olympian Stephanie Sang in a five-set match before beating Lina Lei in four to claim another title. Liu also won the Under 21 and Under 19 Women’s Singles titles during her extremely dominant weekend.

Nicholas Lum may have finished second in the Open Men’s final, but the young star took home a number of other titles from the weekend including the Under 21, Under 19 and Under 17 Singles championships as well as the Men’s and Under 19 doubles titles partnering with Finn Luu (Loops).

Dandenong duo Parleen Kaur and Connie Psihogios defeated the Loops pairing of Chermaine Quah and Sanaya Buddhadasa in the final of the Girl’s Under 19 doubles. Psihogios also took out the win in the Under 17 doubles with Loops rising star Cherry Le.

Overall the juniors had some fantastic numbers and it was brilliant to see such a good turn out. With 124 entries it was the largest junior tournament of 2021 and the first time in years we have seen more than 100 entries for a junior tournament.

Tarneit’s Reddy Rohit Tatikonda won the Over 30 Men’s Singles with a four-set victory over Coburg’s Keman Lu. And in the Over 30 Women’s Singles it was Knox Indoor’s Vivienne Halocha defeating Albert Park’s Lydia Liu in three sets.

In the Para categories Jessy Chen dropped her first set to Daniela Di Toro in the final of the Para Wheelchair Singles but came back strong to beat the Paralympian in four sets. Chen alongside Caleb Crowden also won the Para Wheelchair doubles, the pair took out Di Toro and partner Amanda Tscharke in a four-set match.