Youngster Oyinlomo Barakat Quadre continued her year-long impressive showing with a commanding 6-1, 6-0 win over compatriot Osariemen Airhunmwunde to move to the second round of the Lagos Open Tennis International Championship.

The teenager, who won two singles titles at ITF Junior Circuits in September, was dominant against the former Nigeria number four-ranked player wrapping up the match in less than an hour.

Since her return from the ITF High Performance Center in Casablanca,Morocco, the 14-year-old wild card entrant has been Nigeria’s most successful player at junior level in the last two years.

In another women’s singles match, Valeriy Strakhova of Ukraine eased to a 6-1, 6-0 win over Jasmin Jebawy of Germany.

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Meanwhile, in the men’s singles, Sylvester Emmanuel crashed out in the first round of the $100, 000 prize-money tournament following a 6-0, 6-0 defeat by India’s Arvean Govea.

The defeat was one of the heaviest for the Nigeria’s number two player who had hoped to make a mark in the upgraded tournament by featuring in tournaments in Monastir, Tunisia last week.

His sojourn to the North African country followed his winning the CBN Open and the Vemp Open, the last two national tournaments in Nigeria.

Govea attributed his comfortable win to the enormous pressure that his opponent was put through noting he (Emmanuel) is popular among the Nigerian fans.

A forgetful day for Nigeria was completed as Joseph Imeh, who like Emmanuel was a wild card beneficiary, also succumbed to first round defeat.

Djokovic targets number one spot

Novak Djokovic is back home in Belgrade preparing for an offensive to regain the world number one spot after roaring back into top form by winning the US Open.

“I planned to be here with my family … and everything is set so that I’m again in the race for number one,”

Djokovic told reporters in a tennis centre owned by his family in the Serbian capital.

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“I hope that Belgrade will bring me luck.”

Djokovic has been using the modern facilities to gather his strength for a rousing finale to a season in which he has risen from the ashes after a difficult 2017.

His next stop is the Shanghai Masters from next Monday.

“I decided with my team to stay a bit longer in Belgrade to recover and make a solid base for Shanghai,” the 31-year-old Serb added.

Since Wimbledon, Djokovic, who was absent for six months from competition in 2017 and underwent elbow surgery in February, has lost just one match, a surprise defeat in Toronto by Greek Stefanos Tsitsipas.

Before winning his 14th Grand Slam in New York, equalling Pete Sampras’s mark, Djokovic also won in Cincinnati.

He took part at Laver Cup where he was defeated twice — in doubles with Roger Federer and in singles by Kevin Anderson.

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With no need to defend points until the end of the year and Rafael Nadal out with injury, Djokovic could indeed finish the year at the summit for the fifth time after 2011, 2012, 2014 and 2015.

But although not hiding his ambitions to be on the throne again, “Nole” appears patient.

First he wants to play the best in Shanghai and then, maybe, pick up other points at tournaments where he has played either rarely, or never, like in Basel or Vienna.

“We are leaving this possibility open,” he said. “But first and foremost I have to play well in Shanghai.”

In the ATP rankings Djokovic is currently third, behind Nadal and Federer.

But in the ATP Race to London, the Serb is second with 1,000 points behind his Spanish rival.