Louise Hunt won the women’s singles and Alfie Hewett and David Phillipson clinched the men’s doubles title at the Polish Open, with Hunt and James Shaw also finishing runner-up the women’s doubles and quad doubles respectively at one of the first tournament to fall inside the year-long ranking qualification window for the Rio 2016 Paralympics.
Fourth seed Hunt gained the biggest victory of her career in the women’s singles, reaching the semi-finals by beating Austria’s Margrit Fink 6-1, 6-1and Australia’s Janel Manns 6-1, 6-3. The British No. 3 then defeated Dutch second seed and world No. 11 Michaela Spaanstra 6-3, 7-6(11) in the last four and went on to beat her first world top 10 ranked opponent with a 6-2, 2-6, 6-4 victory over Germany’s world No. 8 Katharina Kruger.
Hunt narrowly missed out on adding the women’s doubles partnering American Emmy Kaiser. The second seeds moved into the final after beating Russia’s Ludmila Bubnova and Chile’s Maria Paz Diaz 6-2, 6-3. They then split sets with top seeds Kruger and Spaanstra, but Kaiser and Spaanstra took the deciding match tie-break to prevail 6-4, 2-6, (10-4).
There was better new for Hewett and Phillipson after a match tie-break in the men’s doubles final. The top seeds moved into the title decider for the loss of just three games in two matches and then won the important points to defeat third seeds Frederic Cattaneo of France and Daniel Caverzaschi of Spain 7-5, 3-6, (10-6).
After both being members of Great Britain’s gold medal-winning men’s team at the World Team Cup, third seed Phillipson and fourth seed Hewett both reached the semi-finals of the men’s singles with two straight sets wins apiece. Phillipson beat Argentina’s Ezequiel Casco and Dutch seventh seed Ricky Molier, but then bowed out 7-5, 6-2 to French tops seed and eventual champion Frederic Cattaneo. Hewett defeated Sri Lanka’s Upali Rajakaruna and Austrian fifth seed and former world No. 3 Martin Legner in straight sets to reach the last four, hut was then beaten 6-4, 6-0 by Australian second seed Adam Kellerman.
Shaw partnered Israel’s Patrick Ben Uriel to the final of the quad doubles after beating American David Buck and Sophie Fraioli of France 6-1, 6-4. However, they were narrowly denied the title after a match tie-break, with top seeds Antonio Raffaele of Italy and Dorrie Timmermans-van Hall of the Netherlands taking the final 7-5, 2-6, (10-2).
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