Jelena Ostapenko and Alex de Minaur ready for Wimbledon with Eastbourne wins

LONDON: Jelena Ostapenko and Alex de Minaur tuned up for Wimbledon in the best way possible, winning the first grass-court titles of their careers at the Eastbourne tournament on Saturday.

Ostapenko, the 2017 French Open champion and a wild-card entry in Eastbourne, collected her first WTA trophy since 2019 and fourth overall by beating Anett Kontaveit 6-3, 6-3 in the women's final.

Then the No. 2-seeded de Minaur came back to edge No. 3 seed Lorenzo Sonego 4-6, 6-4, 7-6 (5) over more than 2 1/2 hours in a men's final in which each player collected the same number of total points, 107-107.

That gave the 22-year-old Australian his fifth ATP title and second of 2021. All eight previous finals he had appeared in were on hard courts, including his championship at Antalya, Turkey, in January.

The best Grand Slam showing for de Minaur also came on a hard court with a quarterfinal run at last year's U.S. Open.

He's been as far as the third round at Wimbledon.

Ostapenko reached the semifinals there in 2018 and the quarterfinals the year before and won the girls' title there in 2014. But she lost in the first round of Wimbledon the last time it was played, two years ago, and also had first-round exits at each of this year's first two major tournaments, the Australian Open and French Open. Agencies

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