Calbucci and Cappelletti on top of the world

Italy’s Alessandro Calbucci and Michele Cappelletti won the ITF Beach Tennis World Championships after a convincing 6-3 6-0 victory over Nikita Burmakin and Tommaso Giovannini in the final on Sunday.

The Italian pair, who had both been crowned World Champions three times each in the past, had never previously won a world title together but they proved to be a dominant force at this year’s event in Terracina.

The duo didn’t drop a set en route to a fourth World Championships title, knocking out one half of the defending champions in the semi-finals, before making light work of the World No. 1 Burmakin and world No. 2 Giovannini in the final.

Reflecting on the victory, Cappelletti said: "We have lost many times to Giovannini and Burmakin but today we have been simply perfect. We have won our fourth title - no-one else has done it - so we wrote a bit of beach tennis history."

Calbucci added: "Beach tennis is a technicak game but it's very mental. The margun of error is very small so 50 per cent is in your mind. Although we lost sometimes with them we were confident that we had prepared for three weeks in a row for this tournament.

"We played as a team and as friends and this is a great, great victory for us."

For Burmakin and Giovannini the result was the outcome of a poor performance, with the latter explaining that he didn't feel "right" from the moment he stepped on Centre Court and the former conceding that they gave away too many easy points.