Three NorCal players claim pro doubles titles

Connie Ma, 15, of Dublin in the San Francisco Bay Area, won
the doubles title and reached the singles final in a $15,000
tournament in Evansville, Ind. Photo by Paul Bauman

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   Three players with Northern California ties, including 15-year-old Connie Ma, won doubles titles in professional tournaments this weekend.
   And two, including Ma, reached singles finals.
   Third-seeded Jovana Jaksic, a Serbian based in Sacramento, and Renata Zarazua of Mexico topped unseeded Sanaz Marand and Whitney Osuigwe, 16, of the United States 6-3, 5-7 [10-4] in the final of the Braidy Industries $60,000 Women's Tennis Classic in Ashland, Ky.
   Jaksic, 24, also reached the singles semifinals before losing to eventual champion Gail Brodsky.
   Unseeded Markus Eriksson and Andre Goransson (Cal, 2014-17) of Sweden edged Ivan Gakhov and Alexander Pavlioutchenkov of Russia 6-3, 3-6 [10-7] to capture the 43,000 Euro ($50,129) Aamulehti Tampere (Finland) Open.
   Ma -- a 5-foot-3 (1.60-meters), 95-pound (43.1-kilogram) amateur from Dublin in the San Francisco Bay Area -- and Gianna Pielet, 16, beat Meghan Kelley and Bianca Moldovan 6-3, 7-5 in an all-American final in the $15,000 Women's Hospital Classic in Evansville, Ind. Both teams were unseeded. Kelley and Moldovan will be seniors at Virginia and North Carolina State, respectively.
   The Ashland singles final featured a rare matchup of qualifiers as Brodsky, 27, defeated fellow American Maegan Manasse (Cal, 2014-17) 4-6, 6-1, 6-0.
   In the Evansville final, third-seeded Elysia Bolton of Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y., beat the sixth-seeded Ma 6-3, 4-6, 6-3. Bolton will enroll at UCLA in the fall.