It has been four years since the two players last played each other and, according to LTA Development Officer Hugh Raymond, Pavlovic, a refugee from Croatia, who now has French citizenship, was visibly the more nervous of the two, as she lost the first game to love before, in the second set, she broke Kerber to go 4-3 up.
Unfortunately for Pavlovic she lost the next three games in a row.
Kerber’s win after the week-long tournament earned her £1,646 but, more importantly, it has meant that she is now in the top 300 of women’s tennis.
Meanwhile Britain’s Georgie Stoop, who entered the competition as a wild card, has moved from 496 in the world to 396, by reaching the Caversham semi-finals where she lost to Kerber 6-4, 6-1.
In the men’s singles on Saturday, two of the hardest hitting players, Jean-Claude Scherrer, from Switzerland and New Zealand’s Daniel King-Turner slugged out a serve and volley battle which saw both players go 23 games without dropping their serve before the Swiss player edged ahead in a two hour battle, to win 7-6, 7-5.
In a tournament which had seen King-Turner earlier on in the week knock out the sixth, second and fourth seeds, before finally losing to the fifth seed, the winner said afterwards that he was: ‘glad to have won in only two sets as I was feeling very tired.
But I have confidence in my serve and in my overall game’.
Scherrer was also forcing the pace, taking King-Turner’s serve as early as he could, to put his fellow finalist under pressure.
The New Zealander recognised that.
‘By taking the ball early, he was always putting me under pressure although having had a few tough games in the opening round makes you focus more.’ For his week at Les Ormes, Jean-Claude leaves the Island with a little over £1,111 to his credit.
The men’s doubles was a one-sided affair as David Klier and Philipp Marx ran out easy winners, 6-2, 6-4 against Ladislav Chramosta from the Czech Republic and Navdeep Singh, from India.
The two Germans made it look very easy and showed the value of having played as a pair before, compared to their opponents who were a scratched pairing.
The ladies doubles’ final was between Britain’s Katie O’Brien, partnering Margit Ruutel from Estonia, playing against Veronika Chvojkova (Czech Republic) and Katie’s fellow Great Britain player Claire Peterzan.
In arguably the best final of the two yesterday, which saw some breath-taking recovery shots from all four players, O’Brien and Ruutel won 7-5, 6-4, although this was another game which could easily have become a three-setter.
‘This competition simply gets better and better,’ said Raymond afterwards.
‘We’ve had 154 matches, used 144 dozen tennis balls and seen 35 people, of different nationalities, compete in this tournament.
Stuart Smith, the president of the LTA who was over for the event, was totally delighted by it.
And, the good thing from our point of view, is that people now know Jersey – and realise it’s an Island! They love coming here and our problem now is all to do with numbers.
This year’s tournament was heavily oversubscribed, which shows how popular it has now become.
‘We’ve also never had so many doubles players so highly ranked in world tennis.’
