Wukirasih turns the tables upside down in tennis final
By Bruce Emond
JAKARTA (JP): History books will show that Indonesia's Wukirasih Sawondari won the women's singles at the SEA Games, beating Thai top seed Tamarine Tanusagarn 6-2, 7-5 in just over an hour and a half on the Senayan Clay Court.
But the facts do not tell the whole story of yesterday's match. Wukirasih perfectly executed her game plan against an out- of-sorts opponent rattled by the constant jeering of the rowdy local crowd.
On a perfect day for the host women, Liza Andryani/Wynne Prakusya captured the women's doubles golds, beating Tamarine/Benjamas Sangaram 2-6, 6-1, 6-4.
After her semifinal Thursday, Wukirasih had said she planned to force long rallies to exhaust the Thai, world ranked 37th.
She did just that from the outset, mixing moonballs with sliced backhands and drop shots to keep Tamarine off balance.
From 2-2 in the first set, the 17-year-old Indonesian won five consecutive games to go ahead 1-0 in the second. The final game of the first set was representative of the match as a whole.
Tamarine, with serve, tried vainly to blast her way through her opponent's defenses, virtual suicide on the slow red clay. Too often the balls sailed long, or she was left flat-footed and out of position from a Wukirasih retrieval.
At 2-2 in the second set, Wukirasih broke serve and held her own to go 4-2 up. Tamarine buckled down and briefly showed her true form, breaking right back to love as she stepped in to take the ball on the rise and winners sprayed from her racket.
The small Thai contingent's hopes of a turnaround were shortlived. At 5-5 and 40-0, Tamarine was poised to take the game. There then followed a bizarre comedy of errors as she seemed unable to kill off the game.
Wukirasih, playing with experience beyond her years and her 456 ranking, made no mistake as she coolly served out the match.
Team manager Benny Mailili and chairman of the National Tennis Association Sarwono Kusumamaatmadja joined Wukirasih's teammates on court to congratulate her.
The squad, winner of the team gold on Monday, performed a celebratory jig in the middle of the court.
Scrappy, slow and full of errors, it was not a pretty match to see -- or hear. The spectators' win-at-all-costs attitude and lack of basic tennis etiquette was ugly.
The doubles was a game of two halves. Tamarine, clearly wanting to make up for the morning defeat, began in extremely determined fashion. She and Sangaram ran away with the first set.
Liza and Wynne then woke up and blasted back in uncompromising fashion in the second.
The decider was a see-saw battle with neither pair really able to take control. The Indonesians wasted three match points on Tamarine's serve at 3-5 before Wynne put away a volley in the next game to take the title.
In the men's semifinals, Indonesian top seed Andrian Raturandang lost to Thailand's Paradorn Srichaphan in straight sets. Paradorn will play Philippe Joseph Lizardo, who beat local hope Suwandi in the other semifinal, in today's final.