Baran and Miiller retain mixed title in Terracina
Brazil's Andre Baran and Rafaella Miiller successfully defended their mixed doubles crown at the 2022 ITF Beach Tennis World Championships in Terracina on Wednesday night.
The duo proved invincible once again and are becoming the team to beat in the mixed format, with Brazil winning the ITF World Cup for the last two years in large part thanks to their strength in all forms of the game.
Seeded third, Baran and Miiller might have been surprised not to be up against the Italian-French combination of top seeds Nicole Nobile and Nicolas Gianotti in the final, but that pairing fell in a match tiebreak 7-5 0-6 10-7 against Greta Giusti and Niccolo Gasparri in the semi-finals.
The Brazilians, who had come through a close encounter of their own in the quarter-finals against Giulia Gasparri and Marco Faccini, proved too strong in the final, needing one and 21 minutes to complete a 6-2 6-4 victory.
"I'm happy to be here," Miiller said. "It's always good to play in Terracina. In 2019, I also won the [women's] tournament so, for me, it's always special to play here."
In the third place play-off, Nobile and Gianotti needed another match tiebreak to overcome Veronica Casadei and Ramon Guedez 5-7 6-2 10-6.