AUSTRALIAN OPEN WIN MAKES IT 3 TITLES IN 2006

Wales’s Richard Vaughan won the Australian Open in Melbourne.

Vaughan's rendezvous in the final was with India’s Nikhil Kanetkar, and is third time the pair have fought for top honours in 2006, on the previous two occasions Vaughan had won in close matches, the last being the final of South Africa last month. Vaughan kept up the winning record with a close 22-20, 21-13 win, which delighted the local spectators.

Vaughan said “This is another great win for me, again I had a number of testing matches to get through to reach the final, and the final itself was a tough match all the way through. So it was a good physical test to get through and I will only benefit from the match practice. ”

In the first round Richard beat Sharp from Australia 21-10, 21-10, next he beat Commonwealth Games ¼ Finalist Karenanaratne from Sri Lanka 21-11 22-20. The ¼ final saw Richard defeat up and coming New Zealander G.Tam 21-10 21-14. In the Semi Final Richard beat World No 32 from Germany Hueckstaedt 21-12 21-7.

Kanetkar defeated Australian No1 Gomez in the ¼ final, and Taiwan’s Chen in the semi final.

The draw is out for next weeks 2* Grand Prix in New Zealand, Richard has a tough draw with a 2nd round match versus former world No 7 Ismail from Malaysia who recently reached the ¼ final of the 6* Singapore Grand Prix, and has previously been ranked in the Worlds top 10