Men’s professional tennis on the ITF World Tennis Tour returned to the Central American country of El Salvador after a three-year absence. This return follows last year’s women’s tournament which brought women’s professional tennis back to the nation for the first time since 2005.

Venezuela’s experienced Davis Cup player, Ricardo Rodriguez (2012-18), was top seed at the M15 Santa Tecla tournament where he reeled off eight successive sets to reach the final. There, he fought back from a set down to defeat Jorge Panta, champion the previous week in Cancun, to claim his first singles title of the year and 11th singles title from 22 career finals.

Four players came out of the week as winner of both singles and doubles titles, with all four players achieving this feat for the first time.

On the African continent, Dasha Ivanova added to her doubles win at W15 Sharm El Sheikh by claiming a second singles title in the Egyptian resort town of 2019 whilst at the opposite end of the continent Alexander Donski was winning his maiden singles title at the M15 Pretoria tournament in South Africa having lost his previous three finals this year.

Evgeniya Levashova’s singles title not only gave her double success in the week but was also, like Donski, a career first pro singles title triumph. Levashova’s singles win was the first of three matches for the Russian on Sunday as she twice more returned to court to contest her doubles semi-final, won on a match tiebreak 11-9, and the doubles final itself.

Anna Turati was in America for the W15 Norman, OK tournament and the Italian completed her “double” win with a straight sets defeat of Dalayna Hewitt to add to three summer titles she won in Tabarka, Tunisia.

Six other players joined Donski and Levashova in winning maiden pro singles titles at the weekend with Marek Gengel and Merel Hoedt joining Donski by winning in Africa, Yecong Mo knocking out the top seed en route to giving the crowd a home winner in China and there were victories in Europe for Arthur Reymond, Petia Arshinkova and Maria Gutierrez Carrasco.

Since August 2016, when Johan Nikles won his first pro singles title, the Swiss player has reached an five finals without success but that sequence was brought to an end in Spain with a comeback win over Ricardo Ojeda Lara in the M15 Sabadell final.

Caroline Dolehide was the big winner of the week in the women’s game. Dolehide won 6-2 6-0 either side of a tiebreak loss to Grace Min in Charleston, USA, for a second W60 title win of the year.

With nine pro singles titles in 2018, the most won by a player in a calendar year, Chilean Fernanda Brito was back on the winning trail as she returned home to Santiago where she claimed a third title of 2019 adding to her back-to-back April wins in South America.

The ITF World Tennis Tour also made its first stopover of the year in Vietnam where American Daniel Nguyen, a former ATP top 200 player, won a 14th singles title of his pro career. He will be looking to follow up his first title of 2019 and will be back in Vietnam this week.