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Tough opening matches for Schorr
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Posted on Jan 24 2019
The CNMI’s Robbie Schorr played in challenging matches in the first stop of his series of ITF Juniors tournaments in New Zealand.
He had close matches in both the singles and doubles events of the 2019 Tecnifibre Wellington ITF Juniors at the Renouf Tennis Centre in Wellington. In the singles division’s first round last Monday, the unranked Schorr was pitted against qualifier Jack Loutit of Australia and the match went back and forth before the latter escaped with a 6-4, 6-4 victory. The Aussie was then defeated by No. 14 seed and his compatriot Jack MacCarthy in the second round, 6-3, 3-6, 6-3, while Schorr, after the loss, focused on his doubles game.
The Commonwealth junior player teamed up with New Zealand’s Alex Evans and they were at the upper half of the draw. The CNM-New Zealand duo challenged the Japanese pair of Hayato Nakamura and Rintaro Yamada and the first round match last Tuesday went through a supertie-breaker third set. Schorr and Evans drew first blood with an impressive 6-2 victory, but missed the sweep when the Japanese players found their grove and took a 6-3 win. Then in the decider, Yamada and Nakamura kept their momentum en route to a 10-7 win. The Japanese played in another extended game in the second round, but this time were beaten by No. 8 seed Satchel Benn and Jin Dassanayake of New Zealand, 4-6, 7-5, 11-9.
Meanwhile, Schorr will leave Wellington this weekend to go to Christchurch and compete in the 2019 Wilson Tennis Canterbury ITF.
The 16-year-old’s second tournament in New Zealand will run from Jan. 28 to Feb. 2 at the TrustPower Wilding Park Tennis Centre and he is entered in the main draw of both the singles and doubles events. The draw sheets for the Wilson Tennis Canterbury ITF have yet to be posted, but majority of the players seeing action in the Wellington event will also compete in the Grade 4 tournament. Forty-six players are listed on the main draw acceptance roster, including the highest-ranked in the field—world No. 73 Chen Dong of Australia.
Schorr is currently ranked No. 991 and will be joined in the tournament by players from Japan, New Zealand, Vanuatu, Hong Kong, and the Philippines.
After the event in Christchurch, the CNMI junior player will cap his three-tournament trip to New Zealand in Auckland, as he sees action in the NZ ITF Summer Championships that will take place from Feb. 5 to 9 at the Scarbro Tennis Centre.
