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Bautista Agut, Once A Runner-Up, Now Winston-Salem Open Champ

Roberto Bautista Agut (center, white tennis shirt) greets Winston-Salem Open Director Bill Oakes as he heads to the championship trophy presentation. PAUL GARBER/WFDD

The Winston-Salem Open wrapped up a week of play over the weekend, and this year's winner is a familiar face.

Roberto Bautista Agut was also in last year's finals, but came up short and walked away with the runner-up trophy. This year, he finished the job, knocking off Damir Dzumhur in straight sets.

Dzumhur fell behind early in both sets but came back strong to make them competitive. But he was never able to put either one away.

It was a smooth tournament for the top-seeded Bautista Agut, who became the first player to win the Open without losing a set. Along the way, he also picked up his 200th career win.

Despite the loss, Dzumhur also made some history at the tournament, becoming the first player from Bosnia-Herzegovina to reach an ATP World Tour final.

Bautista Agut, who entered the tournament as the 15th-ranked player in the world, moved up to 13th. And after a string of wins that led to the finals, Dzumhur rose 11 spots to number 56.

Paul Garber is a Winston-Salem native and an award-winning reporter who began his journalism career with an internship at The High Point Enterprise in 1993. He has previously worked at The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The News and Record of Greensboro and the Winston-Salem Journal, where he was the newspaper's first full-time multimedia reporter. He won the statewide Media and the Law award in 2000 and has also been recognized for his business, investigative and multimedia reporting. Paul earned a BA from Wake Forest University and has a Master's of Liberal Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Master's of Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in Lewisville.

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