Lagos Open Women Champion, Riya Bhatia Named In India’s Fed Cup Team

World tennis stars who played in the annual Lagos Open Tennis Championship have been seen to, after the tournament, made it big in their choosing career in the racket game.

Many Indian players, both men and women, had over the years, used the Lagos Open Tennis, which before now was Governor’s Cup Lagos Tennis Championship, to launch themselves into the limelight of the game.

One of such players is 22-year-old Riya Bhatia who won the second leg of 2019 edition of the Lagos Open Tennis at the Lagos Lawn Tennis Club, Onikan last October. Bhatia beat Nastja Kolar of Slovenia 7-5, 1-6, 6-3 in the final of the $50,000 ITF women’s tennis tournament.

After the Lagos Open Tennis, the former Indian national grass court and hard court champion in December, 2019,  was announced by the India Tennis Association (AITA) as one of the players to represent the country in the Fed Cup Asia/Oceania Group 1 event.

She is to join the likes Sania Mirza, who was also in Lagos to play in the 2004 edition of the Governor’s Cup Lagos Tennis. Mirza won the two legs of that year’s tournament. Ankita Raina, Rutuja Bhosale, and Karman Kaur Thandi are the other players of the five-member squad. Sowjanya Bavisetti is the reserve player.

According to Sportstar, former Davis Cupper Vishal Uppal will be the captain of the side while former Fed Cupper Ankita Bhambri has been named the coach of the women team.

Bhatia was ranked 516 when she came to Nigeria for the Lagos Open Tennis 2019, but by December, 2019, First Post reports that she was ranked 319 in the world.