The 16-year-old won the Tamil Nadu women’s tennis title in a epic three-hour match, with an impressive finish under floodlights.

With six points all in the final game of the women’s singles title decider at the Tamil Nadu State Championships on Saturday, the match was moved to an adjoining court due to poor lighting.

It was a last-minute tie in an already intense battle between top seed Sai Samhitha and underrated teenager Lakshmi Prabha that began more than three hours ago on Court 3 of the Stadium. SDAT in Chennai.

Sai and Lakshmi reached the climax of the clash with consecutive set wins in all rounds. However, the 27-year-old Sai started as a match against a 16-year-old opponent.

The final began in overcast conditions at 3:20pm. Sai struggled with her first serves and was knocked down 1-4 instantly. The sixth game of the opening set saw a long loss but in the end, Lakshmi kept serving despite making three double errors to lead 5-1.

From here, there is a sudden shift in momentum. Sai, with his backhand and flat one-handed serves, won 16 of the next 21 points, breaking his younger opponent’s serve twice, to level 5. -5.

Lakshmi regained his advantage by breaking Sai’s serve in the next game, but failed to serve a set in the following game. The first set of the women’s final entered a head-to-head confrontation, with the weather turning from overcast to mildly sunny, then light drizzle and back to overcast again.

Meanwhile, the men’s singles final on field 4, although started half an hour after the women’s final, was nearing its end as eventual champion Dhakshineswar Suresh led Guhan Rajan 6-0, 3-0. The men’s wheelchair final came to an end after starting at the same time as the women’s climax clash.

In the first tiebreak set, Sai, after coming back from 1-3 and down 2-5, hit a bit too much with a score of 5-6. The ball landed wide and Lakshmi won the set, which lasted one hour and 15 minutes.

The teen served in the first game of the second set but appeared to be out of breath. Sai took control and fixed the score 6-1 in 45 minutes. The top seed took a 3-0 lead in the decisive third set. At this point, it feels as if the opening setup never happened.

As the light began to dim, Lakshmi, who appeared to be looking down and out, began to shine again.

“At that point (0-3 in the third inning), I just wanted to stay on every point that I played. I just kept pushing myself,” the 12th grader at Campion Anglo-Indian Higher Secondary School in Trichy, later said.

Her ball recalling skills and superior mobility on the court got her back to first reducing the deficit to 2-3 before opening up a 5-4 lead. Each and every point won is followed by a “Come on!” to improve yourself.

However, in his two championship services with 5-4 and 6-5, Lakshmi played poorly, making two double errors. This allows Sai to punish her gentle second serves.

The final set went to tiebreak. Unlike the first set, Sai made the first move as she led 3-0. A frustrated Lakshmi, perhaps listening to her mother from the sidelines to “score by point”, twice came in from behind to level the score at three all and five all. Sai squandered a championship point at 6-5, overshot his header on the diagonal, and then it happened.

The lights dimmed and the organizers moved the match to field 5, where the floodlights were already on.

Tiebreak continued with a six-all and Lakshmi had one more chance to serve the title with a 7-6 scoreline. This time, she didn’t let up when a 16-shot rally with Sai made an Ons Jabeur-like shot from the bottom line, only to see the ball hit the net and end an epic game. lasting three hours and 25 minutes, one of the longest women’s singles matches on Indian soil. According to Indian tennis insiders, a women’s singles match in Delhi in 2014 went on for 4 hours 32 minutes.

Lakshmi, who will next compete at the national youth tournament in Chennai in August, has no such role models in tennis but “likes the hard work of Rafael Nadal, the consistency of Novak Djokovic and the skill of Roger Federer.”