Just a few hours after beating Fery in a tight semi-final clash, Bu was back on the Ann Jones Centre Court to face off against last year\u2019s champion Virtanen.<\/p>\n
It was the Finnish star who got off to a fast start, dropping just one point behind his first serve and hitting 13 winners in a dominant opening set.<\/p>\n
Bu picked up his level in the second set and momentum shifted completely shifted heading into the tie-break. The 24-year-old from China won the opening four points before a wayward forehand from Virtanen set up four set points.<\/p>\n
Once he got back on serve, the Chinese star made no mistake \u2013 firing a laser backhand down the line to force another error and take the set from a frustrated Virtanen.<\/p>\n
The pressure told for Virtanen midway through the deciding set. The former champion hit a double fault on the only break point he faced at 3-2, before Bu closed out eight of his last nine points on serve.<\/p>\n
There was British success in the men\u2019s doubles earlier in the day as Ben Jones and Joshua Paris took home the ATP Challenger title.<\/p>\n
Jones and Paris returned a day after starting their final against Anirudh Chandrasekar and Takeru Yuzuki 6-4, 7-6(4).<\/p>\n
It\u2019s their first doubles together and a first grass court trophy for both of the British stars.<\/p>\n
\u201cBen and I are really good friends so it\u2019s nice to share this victory with him,\u201d said Paris. \u201cHopefully we can carry on and get some more wins on the grass and keep going for the rest of the season as well. Thank you to everyone for a great tournament.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve had an amazing week here in Birmingham,\u201d Jones added. \u201cEveryone has been super friendly, super welcoming. Well done to Anirudh and Takeru \u2013 we\u2019ll see you in the finals at Ilkley as well hopefully.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Just a few hours after beating Fery in a tight semi-final clash, Bu was back on the Ann…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":628101,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-628100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=628100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628100\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/628101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=628100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=628100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=628100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}