PUNE, OCT 24: Champions have a unique flair for reaching the highest levels of glory. Everytime that you think they are down, they rise to the occasion. And what helps do so is the positive frame of mind that they possess.Sai Jayalakshmi never in the marathon two-hour battle had thought of losing the tie. Not even that difficult moment, when she was off track in the second set.``I just did not want to give way this time. It was my third final, and I knew that I will have to put something more than usual to break the barrier,'' said the Krishnan Tennis Academy trainee.The 21-year-old Chennai-based lass, recently back from a two-month tour to England and Italy, put all her faculties together to overcome the Thai challenge, beating the hard hitting Montika Anuchan 6-3, 3-6, 6-1 to win the BPL Mobile second leg ITF women's tennis tournament final at Deccan Gymkhana's centre court.The left-handed Montika, who has recently finished a two-year training course at the Nick Bolletier Academy, US, showed thefirst signs of resistance, trailing at 1-4 in the first set. She broke Sai in the sixth to make it 2-4. Both players, thereafter, shared breaks in the next three games, before Sai took it 6-3.A charged-up Montika gave a real tough time to her higher seeded and 735 WTA ranked opponent, snatching the second set at will.She broke Sai in the first and third to take a comfortable 4-0 advantage. Sai did tried to crawl back by winning the next three games, breaking the Thai in sixth, but that was not good enough for her.The decider set itself saw six double faults from Montika. Sai apart from dropping her serve only once in fourth, had a rather relatively easy time winning it at 6-1.With this win, Sai goes to the third and final leg at Indore (scheduled from Oct 26) as a top seed, with an aggregate of 28 circuit points, while Rushmi Chakravarthi and Montika follow her at second and third place in the seeding list respectively.RESULTS (Prefix denotes seeding)SINGLES (final): 3- SaiJayalakshmi (Ind) bt 7- Montika Anuchan (Thai) 6-3, 3-6, 6-1.Circuit points after II legSingles: Sai Jayalakshmi (Ind) 28 (12+16); Rushmi Chakravarthi (Ind) 24 (16+8); Montika Anuchan (Thai) 18 (6+12); Shruti Dhawan (Ind) 14 (8+6); Orawan Wangkamalasai (Thai) 14 (8+6); Archana Venkatraman (Ind) 12 (6+6); Anna Nefedova (Rus) 9 (6+3).Doubles: Rushmi Chakravarthi-Sai Jayalakshmi (Ind) 24 (12+12); Archana-Aarti Venkatraman (Ind) 13 (5+8); Orawan Wongkamalasai-Anuchan Montika (Thai) 11 (8+3); Shruti Dhawan-Gautam Sheetal (Ind) 11.
