Tennis News
At 62nd Annual Orange Bowl International Tennis Championships, Key Biscayne, Florida ( ITF Grade A event)

16 yrs old Yuki Bhambri became the first Indian player to win a 16s or 18s Orange Bowl singles championship, he showed remarkable consistency in defeating 18-year-old Jarmere Jenkins.

With this win he will move to no. 2 in the ITF Junior Rankings in year-end rankings ... This is the best result achieved by an Indian junior since at least Leander more then 10 years back ... Karan & Sanam had briefly reached no.4 in the rankings, but those were early in the year.

With this title win Yuki has earned a wild card for qualifying at Miami Master Series ATP in March 09 ... Also as one of the top 2 ranked players, he will receive a junior exempt spot in the three 15K (+H) futures anywhere in the world ... So very big opportunity for him to make some progress on pro tour next year.

Boys’ 18s Singles -

[F] (2) Yuki Bhambri (IND,4) bt Jarmere Jenkins (USA,116) 61 63

[SF] (2) Yuki Bhambri (IND,4) bt (4) Cedrik-Marcel Stebe (GER,6) 63 46 61
[QF] (2) Yuki Bhambri (IND,4) bt Julien Obry (FRA,88) 62 64
[R3] (2) Yuki Bhambri (IND,4) bt (WC) Ryan Noble (USA,361) 63 63
[R2] (2) Yuki Bhambri (IND,4) bt Harry Fowler (USA,66) 62 64
[R1] (2) Yuki Bhambri (IND,4) bt Dennis Novikov (USA,439) 60 62

Boys’ 18s Doubles

[F] (1) Yuki Bhambri (IND)/ Chase Buchanan (USA) l (7) Devin Britton (USA)/ Jarmere Jenkins (USA) 67(9) 26

[SF] (1) Yuki Bhambri (IND)/ Chase Buchanan (USA) bt (3) Shuichi Sekiguchi (JPN)/ Tsung-Hau Yang (TPE) 36 64 10(8)
[QF] (1) Yuki Bhambri (IND)/ Chase Buchanan (USA) bt Jordan Cox (USA)/ Evan King (USA) 63 63
[R2] (1) Yuki Bhambri (IND)/ Chase Buchanan (USA) bt Ryan Noble (USA)/ William. R Parker (USA) 64 61
[R1] (1) Yuki Bhambri (IND)/ Chase Buchanan (USA) bt Emilio Gomez (ECU)/ Jose Pereira (BRA) 62 62

But Jenkins played spoil sport for Yuki to denying double crown as he and partner Devin Britton pulled out a very tight first set against Yuki and Chase, and then easily won second set in doubles final.

Excellent performance by Yuki to win the Grade A Orange Bowl tournament, after a brief period of below par results in the middle of the year ... But Yuki has picked up his game remarkebly since Junior Davis Cup in October, after that he has gone 26-2 win-loss record with most of the wins against top 100 players.

Yuki Bhambri - "It's a big achievement. It's the biggest tournament in the states after the U.S. Open, so I feel very proud of myself."

"It feels really great, and it’s an honor to be the first player from India to win this title. Jarmere’s played some unbelievable tennis this week, and he’s so quick on the court, that I just needed to execute my shots and try my best to keep him off balance."

"Jarmere is an attacking player, he likes to come to the net a lot, get on you very quickly. He was missing at the start, he was a bit nervous, and started to lose confidence."

Bhambri said that it wasn't so much the weakness of the Jenkins backhand as the strength of his forehand that had him searching for errors from that side.

"Every time I went to the forehand I would get passed, he'd hit a winner, so that was the only option I had," Yuki said.