ZIMBABWE Davis Cup player Takanyi Garanganga set himself up for what could be a memorable finish to a rather frustrating season after bagging his seventh career singles International Tennis Federation (ITF) Pro Circuit title at the Turkey F50 Futures in Turkey on Sunday.
BY DANIEL NHAKANISO
The third-seeded Garanganga beat second seed Gleb Sakharov from France 6-4, 6-4 in straight sets in the final played at the Riu Kaya Belek Tennis Club in the Turkish resort city of Antalya.
The victory, his sixth career ITF Futures singles title and ninth overall, capped off an extraordinary week for Garanganga in Turkey in which he hardly put a foot wrong throughout the campaign.
Garanganga’s toughest encounter of the week came in the semi-finals, where he had to rally back from a set down to beat Ireland’s Peter Bothwell 3-6, 6-4, 6-4.
However, before the last four encounter, it was all smooth sailing for Garanganga, who had earlier comfortably despatched Russia’s Roman Zhurbin 6-1, 6-0 in the first round before registering a 6-3, 6-3 win over Spain’s Javier Pulgar-Garcia in the round of 16.
Bulgaria’s Gabriel Donev was also no match for Garanganga in the quarter-finals as the Zimbabwean coasted to a 6-3, 6-1 victory.
Garanganga endured a disappointing season on the ITF Pro Circuit in 2016 by his lofty standards as he dropped to position 522 on the world rankings due to a combination of injuries and poor form.
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The former African junior champion has a career-high ranking of number 288 in the world which he achieved in 2014.
Prior to Sunday’s match against Sakharov, Garanganga’s only appearance in a final this year came in October where he narrowly lost out to Germany’s Sebastian Fanselow at the Los Cab USTA Men’s Futures in California.
After finally getting the monkey off his back this year, Garanganga will be hoping to make it two out of two at the Turkey F51 Futures which got underway at the same venue in Turkey yesterday.
