Wanborough's Louise Hunt won her second and third titles in eight days on the 2011 NEC Wheelchair Tennis Tour with victories in both the women's singles and women's doubles at the weekend at the North West Challenge in Preston, the first British-based world ranking event of the year.
The 19-year-old University of Bath student, who had been runner-up in the women's singles in Preston for the past two seasons, was in sparkling form as she dropped just two games in three matches to justify her top seeding in the women's singles.
After a first round bye Hunt beat British junior player Lauren Jones 6-0, 6-0 before sweeping past another compatriot, Debbie Thomas, 6-1, 6-0. British No 3 Hunt then threw in a rare double fault as she dropped just the fourth game of the second set in the final, but an otherwise confident performance saw her ease past German third seed Claudia Fornefeld 6-0, 6-1.
"I'm very happy with the way I've played this week, except for a slight blip in the second set of the final, but I can't be too upset with myself because I still won 6-0, 6-1. It's been a great start to the season so far and is testimony to all the training I'm doing. I won the last British world ranking event of 2010 in Cardiff, so now I've won in Preston I'm getting used to winning the British tournaments and it's such a nice feeling. It's a busy season with the start of London 2012 qualification and I'm training 24 hours a week around by university work."
Having won the women's doubles at the Jura Indoors in Switzerland just a week earlier in her first tournament of 2011, Hunt added a second doubles title in Preston partnering Cambridgeshire's Laura Coteman. Hunt and Coteman were again top seeds and beat fellow Britons Val Fisher and Caroline Wareing 6-0, 6-2 to reach the final, but then had a walkover when second seeds Emile Chene of France and Fornefeld were forced to withdraw form the scheduled title decider.
Hunt, a part of the Tennis Foundation's World Class Wheelchair Tennis Performance Programme and also supported by the Talented Athlete Sponsorship Scheme
(TASS), now enters a performance camp before returning to Switzerland for another tournament in mid-March.
Listen to the Tennis Foundation interview with Louise Hunt