The Tribune

By BRENT STUBBS

Senior Sports Reporter

bstubbs@tribunemedia.net

KERRIE Cartwright was looking for better results as she started a tour in Heraklion, Greece, at the 12th Lyttos Beach International Tennis Federation's (ITF) Circuit over the weekend, but she admitted that she will take it.

The island nation's only Women's Tennis Association (WTA) ranked player participated in the first of three consecutive tournaments in Greece where she made it to the quarter-finals in singles, losing a hard fought 4-6, 6-0, 6-1 decision to No.4 seed Anastasia Detiuc of the Czech Republic.

Detiuc eventually lost in the final to top seed Raluca Georgiana Serban of Romania 6-3, 5-7, 6-2. Serban also beat Cartwright's American doubles partner Kariann Pierre-Louis 4-6, 6-1, 6-4 in their quarter-final match.

Cartwright and Pierre-Louis also reached the quarter-final in doubles where they were ousted 7-6 (4), 2-6 (11-9) by Michaela Boev of Belgium and Serban.

Boev and Serban went on to win the title with a 6-1, 2-6 (10-7) decision over Gabriela Ana Maria Davidescu and Alexandra Maria Staiculescu of Romania.

"Overall, I thought the tournament was really good," Cartwright told The Tribune. "It was a good start off to my time being here in Greece for the next two weeks.

"I got to the main draw for the next tournament here, so that is really great. Hopefully I can improve on what I did in this last tournament."

In all of her matches played in the tournament last week, Cartwright said she fought extremely hard and left it all on the court.

"In my last match that I played, it was pretty windy that day and I'm surprised that we still had to play," she recalled. "It was at least 25-35 miles per hour winds, so it was pretty tough to even play your game. It was more a battle of who can get lucky in certain situations. It was more of a battle like that to see who could get through that day.

"But overall, it was pretty good. I'm very glad of how I did. I'm really looking forward to the next tournament this week and the next one that will follow right after that. My expectations is just to go out there and play my best, to try my best, to play my game and to enjoy it as much as I can and to have fun."

If she can win, Cartwright said it will definitely be a feather in her cap. Cartwright, 25, will be back at the same venue to play her next tournament this week.

She is currently ranked at 1,002 in singles and 828 in doubles in the WTA.