Cappelletti-Ramos and Farias-Fernandez Palos double up in Gran Canaria
Men’s pair Michele Cappelletti and Antonio Miguel Ramos Viera and women’s duo Omaira Farias and Eva Fernandez Palos will go into the 2021 beach tennis season full of confidence after ending 2020 in style with a double triumph in Gran Canaria.
Both pairs won the last two tournaments of the 2020 ITF Beach Tennis World Tour calendar in emphatic style – winning back-to-back BT50 and BT100 events at Las Canteras beach.
Cappelletti, the world No. 2, and world No. 4 Ramos Viera defeated Hugo Castellano and Saulo Tejada Damason in both finals, winning 6-1 6-4 at the BT50 event on 28 December before following with a 6-1 6-1 win in the BT100 final on 31 December.
Cappelletti collected his first titles of the year as the curtain came down on 2020, while Ramos Viera added to his triumph alongside Paolo Tronci at a BT50 event in February in Saint Barthelemy, France. Ramos Viera has won 49 titles - and Cappelletti 60 - on the ITF Beach Tennis World Tour in total.
Farias and Fernandez Palos, who climbed to career-high rankings of 35 and 23, respectively, defeated Russian-Latvian pairing Juliia Chubarova and Anastasija Zalomajeva 7-5 7-5 in the BT50 final before surviving a sterner test in the BT100 final, prevailing 2-6 6-2 10-4.
Fernandez Palos has now won 17 titles on the ITF Beach Tennis World Tour – including 4 in 2020 – while Farias has won 34, including three last year.
The BT100 tournament was the highest category event to take place since the restart of the Beach Tennis World Tour in September. A junior event was also held – the first junior tournament held since the tour’s re-start and the fifth in the junior tour’s inaugural year – with Víctor Durán and Marc Filella winning the boys’ event and Ariadna Costa and Carlota Durán emerging triumphant in the girls’ final.
A total of 150 players from 15 different nations took part in the Gran Canaria events, including four of the men’s top 10, with women’s winner Chubarova describing the tournament as “the best Christmas present” in light of the Covid-affected schedule.