Despite a guarantee of much of the essential ingredients needed for two promising senior finals, Stephen Nugent and Catherine Lynch won the Dunlop Irish Open titles easier than expected at Fitzwilliam on Saturday .

The signs looked ominous for Nugent for most of the first set against Conor Niland - the Malahide boy had to recover from 2-5 to win it 7-5. But Niland's dismal effort to hold serve and close down that first set when the opportunities arose was, sadly for him, repeated in the second set. Nugent ran out an easy winner, 75, 6-2.

Previous meetings between the pair were far more competitive; the baseline rallies on Saturday lacked the required variation and were too often littered with unforced errors to be entertaining.

Nugent's first-set recovery was easily the defining feature of a match that lasted an hour and 36 minutes.

Catherine Lynch was impressive, too much so, for the comfort of her Canadian opponent Lara Vojnov in the girls under-18 decider. The Dubliner was rarely not in control, and was 5-0 up before losing her serve to 15. She won the set in the following game. It seemed for a brief spell midway through the second set that Vojnov, who, like Lynch, was unseeded, had something in store. But the Canadian was a little tentative and erratic and succumbed 6-1, 6-3.