Wimbledon <\/a>qualifying, where he\u2019ll be eyeing a place in the main draw.<\/p>\n\u201cIt\u2019s been a great week for me, I enjoyed my stay here – I was made very welcome,\u201d Virtanen added. \u201cA lot of people here today watching and cheering – it’s one of the best feelings in tennis, to play in front of a nice crowd.\u201d<\/p>\n
O’Connell broke early in both sets but couldn\u2019t hold the advantage, as the Finn fought back to level and force consecutive tie-breaks.<\/p>\n
After seeing one match point come and go at 6-5, O’Connell looked to close it out in the second set tie-break. The world No.154 dug up a trio of match points at 6-3, but Virtanen struck again to erase the deficit and give himself a lifeline.<\/p>\n
However, O’Connell held firm and applied the pressure on the Finnish star at 7-6 up, eventually forcing a forehand error to seal his first ever title on grass.<\/p>\n
Earlier today, the men\u2019s doubles final saw Fernando Romboli and Theodore Winegar claim their first title together – beating all-American duo Mac Kiger and Reese Stalder 6-3, 6-4.<\/p>\n
The Brazilian-American partnership converted all three of their break point opportunities on their way to lifting the silverware at the Lexus Nottingham Tennis Centre.<\/p>\n
In the women’s draw, third seed Emma Navarro has set up a final clash against fourth seed Marie Bouzkova<\/a> after both players came through their semi-final matches in straight sets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While he fell short in today\u2019s final, a runner-up finish in Nottingham caps off an extremely impressive few…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":650493,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-650492","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\/650492","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=650492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/650493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=650492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=650492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=650492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}