Mangaonkar wins Maha State crown;Fadte, Yoshna clinch Western

Top seeds Mahesh Mangaonkar and Yash Fadte were clinical in their performance as they claimed theMen's and the U-19 Boys titles,respectively, at the44th Maharashtra State Senior Open Squash Tournament and the inaugural Western Slam (Junior)U-19 on Wednesday.

In the Men's Open final, Mangaonkar quelled early nerves which saw him lose the first game 9-11 before he got into his groove to make short work ofsecond seed Abhishek Pradhan, winning 9-11, 11-3, 11-5, 11-3.

In the Boy's U-19 final, the unseededNeel Joshi put up a strong fight but went down to more experienced Yash Fadte.

The Goa lad started strong, taking the first game 11- 5. In the second game, Neel pushed Yash to the limit, before the more experienced Yash wrested back control to take the 2ndand 3rd games and secure the U-19 title with an 11-5, 12- 10, 11-7 scoreline.

Unseeded Yoshna Singh from Pune, who had a dream run in the tournament, had to fight hard and overcome two tie- breakers before she downed 2ndseed Amira Singh 11-9, 13-11, 5-11, 12-10 and win the U-19 title.

However, the long U-19 match saw Yoshna run out of steam and put paid to her dream of a dual-title when she faced2ndseed Tanvi Khanna in the Women's final.

Tanvi was her consistent self and hardly broke a sweat as she defeated Yoshna 11-4, 11-6, 11-6 in less than 30 minutes.

Results (all finals): Girls U-19: Yoshna Singh bt Amira Singh [2] 11-9, 13-11-5, 5-11, 12-10
Boy's U-19: Yash Fadte [1] bt Neel Joshi 11-5, 12- 10, 11-7