South Africa’s leading wheelchair tennis women’s player, Kgothatso ‘KG’ Montjane, gained revenge for her North West Challenge defeat by sweeping past American world No 14 Dana Mathewson 6-4 6-7 (6) 6-1 and into the quarter-finals of the Japan Open on Thursday.
Montjane lost to the 26-year-old Mathewson in the finals of the North West Challenge tournament, an International Tennis Federation (ITF) level 3 event, in Britain in February this year, but she had her sights set firmly on victory for their rematch in the ITF Super Series tournament in Iizuka.
Eighth-seeded Montjane very much had her game face on and won the opening set with little trouble, but the American challenged her to win the second set in a tie-break to level the score at one set all. However, Montjane came back to take charge and asserted her authority and took the deciding set to advance to the quarter-final round.
The world number 10 avenged her only loss against the American, and next meets her doubles partner, world No 3 Diede De Groot from the Netherlands, for a place in the last four, after De Groot saw off Momoko Ohtani of Japan.
Earlier in the day, fourth-seed Lucas Sithole, 2014 Japan Open champion, had little trouble sweeping aside world No6 Kyu-Seung Kim from Korea Republic with a ruthless 6-0 6-4 scoreline to advance into the semi-final round.
South African world No 4 Sithole, who seeks his second Japan Open title, next meets American world No 2 David Wagner, who is hunting his eighth title in Iizuka. The 30-year-old hopes to make it a repeat of 2014, when he ended Wagner’s sequence of seven successive Japan Open titles.
Picture of Montjane courtesy of Reg Caldecott