Yayuk earns doubles title with Romana

JAKARTA (JP): Yayuk Basuki and Romana Tedjakusuma earned their first professional women's doubles title at the Wismilak Open tennis championships in Surabaya, East Java, without breaking into a sweat on Sunday.

Their Japanese opponents, Kyoko Nagatsuka and Ai Sugiyama, failed to appear since Sugiyama remained debilitated from the illness she suffered in her unfinished singles final against German Elena Wagner.

Sugiyama's dull, tired-looking eyes reflected her declining health in the first set of the singles final, though she managed to seal the set with 6-2. However, in the second, Sugiyama, adopting a defensive strategy to stay afloat, could not hit any point.

With her reflexes getting slower and her serves error-prone, Sugiyama finally opted to withdraw, burst into tears and handed Wagner a 6-0 win and the winners' US$18,000 check.

It was Wagner's second straight title in her tour here after her triumph in the Indonesia Women's Challenger two weeks ago. The German unseeded upset Yayuk in the quarterfinals.

"Not a surprise. It's common," Yayuk said of her $6,000 cash prize she shared with Romana. Yayuk usually teams up with Romana only in tennis events where national pride is at stake, such as the Federation Cup.

It was Yayuk's third career doubles title in a $100,000 tournament. She earned her first and second titles with her Japanese long-time partner Nana Miyagi consecutively in Japan and Taiwan last year.

To compensate the waiting 1,000-strong home crowd for the walkover, the championship's organizer presented an exhibition match between Yayuk/Romana and Nagatsuka/Wagner. The home pair beat the Japanese-German pair 6-4 in the entertaining match. (arf)