Winning start for Okutoyi in W25 tourney at Nairobi Club

Kenya’s Angella Okutoyi on Tuesday made a bright start in both singles and doubles at the second ITF Women’s World Tennis Tour (W25) on the clay courts of the Nairobi Club.

In the singles category, the Kenya Open 2018 and 2022 champion was made to sweat, coming from 1-4 down in the second set to bundle out Indian qualifier Teja Tirunelveli 6-2, 6-4 in the first round of the week-long tournament.

The 2022 Junior Wimbledon Doubles champion had great serves in the first set, where she double-faulted just twice. Both of them registered two aces in this set.

Okutoyi started the second set on the backfoot as Tirunelvel raced to a 4-1 lead thanks to some powerful serves and returns as the Kenyan registered a string of errors.

Just when the match looked out of Okutoyi’s hands, the 2022 Rwanda Open winner composed herself and found her mojo, fighting back to equalise at 4-4 after improving her play and forcing the Indian into making errors, and never looked back.

Okutoyi, who is the first Kenyan player - man or woman - to win a professional singles event since Paul Wekesa achieved the feat at Andorra Challenger in 1994 (she won W15 Monastir in Tunisia in July), had a great outing too in doubles with partner Sada Nahimana from Burundi.

The East Africans saw off Nagomi Higashitani (Japan)/Amanda Elkin (Italy) 6-2, 6-4 in just over an hour in the first round.

Okutoyi and Higashitani teamed up during the first W25 at Karen Country Club, where they settled for second place after losing to top-seeds Fanny Ostlund (Sweden)/Valeriya Strakhova (Ukraine) 6-4, 7-6 in the final on Sunday.

Okutoyi meets Slovak Viktoria Morvayova in the second round of singles, where she will be out to make history by qualifying for the quarter-finals.

The furthest stage the Auburn University student has reached in singles at a W25 event is second round in Florence and Jackson, in October in USA and Nairobi last week.

Okutoyi is the only Kenyan player in top 1,000 in WTA rankings at 943, while her first two rounds opponents Tirunelveli and Morvayova are at 1,097 and 516, respectively. It means she has her work cut out against Morvayova, who won her first round match by defeating Italian seed four Martina Colmegna 6-2, 6-4 on Monday.

It was also a good day for Kenyans Cynthia Wanjala and Roselida Asumwa in the doubles. The duo was eliminated in singles on Sunday in the qualifying draw.

In doubles, Wanjala and partner Shana Mao from Tanzania dismissed Samantha Imbo (USA)/Priyanka Rodricks (India) 6-4, 7-5. Okutoyi’s twin sister, Asumwa partnered Russian Anna Sedysheva to floor Stacy Yego (Kenya)/Ametmarie (Puerto Rico) 6-3, 6-3.