Beth Grey celebrated climbing to a new career high in the world rankings by securing an opening win at UK Pro League Finals Week.
Grey, now just outside the world’s top 400, was pleased to gain a third set tie break victory over Emily Appleton, winning 6-2, 4-6, 11-9, as the group stages continued on day two of the prestigious event at The Shrewsbury Club.
“Me and Emily always have good matches,” said Grey. “We’ve played each other quite a lot in these events, so it was another good battle between us.
“She was serving well, I was serving well, so it was pretty tight to the end.”
Grey, who reached the quarter-finals of the W60 Nantes tournament in France last week, added:
“I’ve played a lot of matches lately, so I feel like I’m quite match tight which is good, especially when it comes down to the tie breaks. It’s nice to start with a win.”
Looking forward to spending the week playing in Shropshire, Grey said: “They’ve put an amazing event on for the finals and Shrewsbury’s a lovely club. They’ve done a great job once again of putting on another great event for us all to play.
“Hopefully I can do well this week. There’s a lot of good players in the pools, so we’ll see how it goes.”
As for her continued progress up the world rankings, she added: “I’m up to my career high today actually of, I think, 406, so that’s nice.”