What were you doing at the age of 15?

There might be plenty of varied responses to that question, but it’s unlikely that any of them would include ‘winning an international beach tennis tournament’.

For Vitoria Cristina Carneiro Marchezini, that’s exactly what she’s been up to. On Sunday, the 15-year-old Brazilian won her first title on the ITF Beach Tennis World Tour on home soil at the BT50 Porto Alegre tournament alongside her 31-year-old partner Marcela Vita.

Not only that, the pair overcame the top two seeds in the process – defeating former world No. 1 Samantha Barijan and her partner Flavia Muniz 6-3 6-3 in the final.

The men’s event saw success for former world No. 1 Vinicius Font and partner Andre Baran, with the pair defeating Airton Rodrigues Macedo and Gabriel Nobrega 6-4 6-4 in the final.

Tournament Director Alex Mingozzi, himself a former world No. 1 in the sport, was delighted with the outcome in his first experience of running a tournament at this level – particularly in light of the significant volume of followers who live streamed the action on the event youtube channel.

“It was a hard and amazing week. We worked so hard to achieve the COVID-19 protocols in a very complicated moment, but the result was great,” Mingozzi said.

“We showed the community that it is possible to play and keep the players safe at the same time. We also reached a historic goal - the semi-finals and finals were the most-viewed matches in the history of the game and I’m very proud of it.”

Two other events on the Tour took place over the weekend, with over 29 nationalities taking part at the BT10 Dubai tournament in UAE, where men’s pair Tiaan Bredenkamp, of South Africa, and Emilio Misas, of Spain, and women’s duo Dania Abu Zeid, of Canada, and Marta Apraiz, of Spain, took the titles.

In Cali, Hector Stiven Gomez Montoya and Christian Guerrero Pizarro won the title in a Colombian-only men’s draw, while Italian Giordana Montoneri and Sayuri Berenice Yonamine de Camargo stood out as the lone non-Colombians – and winners - in the women’s event.

There are two more tournaments scheduled this year on the ITF Beach Tennis World Tour, with two events on Spanish soil – at BT50 and BT100 level, respectively – in Las Palmas De Gran Canaria on 27-28 and 29-31 December.