Okutoyi’s Swiss surge continues with second doubles title in 6 days

Kenyan tennis sensation Angella Okutoyi put on another impressive show to claim her second doubles title in a span of a week, at the W35 Verbier 2 Tournament in Switzerland.

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Okutoyi, playing alongside French teammate Tiphanie Lemaitre, achieved this feat after securing a gutsy final victory over the pair of Valentini Grammatikopoulou (Greece) and Valeriya Strakhova (Ukraine), winning 6-4, 6-7, 10-5 on Friday, 28 August.

The final win meant that the 22-year-old Kenyan had successfully swept the two doubles titles that were on offer at the clay tournament, having also won a similar prize six days prior, at the first week of the event on Saturday, 22 August.

Then, Okutoyi, who is ranked 503rd in the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) standings, paired up with Emma Kamper Malmkjaer of Denmark, to outlast Anastasija Cvetkovic (Serbia) and Sarina Schnyder (Switzerland) 6-4, 4-6, 10-7 in the final.

With another doubles victory, Okutoyi extended her hot run in that discipline, adding to her previous wins in Nottingham, Aschaffenburg and Nairobi, just this year.

Her dominance in the Swiss Alps was not fixated on doubles, as she also made it to the singles final, painfully losing in straight sets (6-4, 6-3) to the aforementioned Cvetkovic on Sunday, 30 August.

Prior to that defeat, the former Auburn University player had racked four consecutive victories, dropping only one set to home player Valentina Ryser in the semifinals.

The result was an improvement on her first week of the W35 tournament last week, when she exited the singles competition at the quarter-final stage.

Okutoyi’s recent positive run of form coincides with her move to full-time professional tennis in London, where she is currently working under former Zimbabwean stars Wayne Black and Cara Black, who won two Grand Slam mixed doubles titles in 2002 and 2004, alongside performance coach Brett Stephens.

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