British player Harriet Dart was defeated in the final
Czech Republic’s Gabriela Knutson won the biggest title of her career at the ITF W40 The Campus Carby Volkswagen Ladies Open.
The tournament was organised by The Campus in Quinta do Lago with the support of the Portuguese Tennis Federation and offered a total prize-money of $40,000 and 70 WTA points for the champion.
Knutson, aged 26 and ranked 201 in the world, beat Great Britain’s Harriet Dart, a former top 100 players, in two sets (6-4 and 6-1) to claim her fourth and biggest title of her career.
Knutson was born in Fair Oaks, California and lived there for 12 years before moving to the Czech Republic. She is quite active off the tennis courts, having returned to the United States as an 18-year-old to study Broadcast Journalism at the Syracuse University and then attended Durham University on a postgraduate scholarship, where she studied for a MSc in Marketing. She stayed on at Durham following the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic to undertake a second postgraduate degree.
Meanwhile, the doubles title was won by top seeds and good friends Olivia Gadecki from Australian and Heather Watson from Great Britain. Having partnered for the first time, they defeated the defending champions, Portuguese sisters Francisca Jorge and Matilde Jorge, 6-4, 6-1. The Portuguese sisters played their 25th final together and were looking for their 15th title.
