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Carol vies for Australian Open slot
Carol Lee will be competing in the Australian Open 2018 Asia-Pacific Wildcard Playoff Tournament in Zhuhai, China. (Contributed Photo)
The CNMI’s Carol Lee will try to make it to a Junior Grand Slam event as she competes in the Australian Open 2018 Asia-Pacific Wildcard Playoff Tournament in Zhuhai, China.
Lee is one of the 15 players vying for a wild card entry to next month’s Australian Open (Juniors) and is seeded No. 4 in the tournament that started yesterday at the Zhuhai Hengqin International Tennis Centre in Guangdong Province. The Commonwealth bet will have her first game in the wild card event today when she takes on the unseeded Sheena Masuda-Karrasch of Hong Kong.
The 15-year-old Lee, who was ranked No. 216 in the world (moved to No. 212 as of Nov. 27) when she signed up for the competition, is favored against the No. 982 Masuda-Karrasch. The Hong Kong bet is just 14 years old and so far has played 15 singles games in her debut in the ITF Juniors Circuit this year, winning eight of them.
Lee, on the other hand, holds a 42-12 win-loss record in her two years with the circuit and made stops around Asia, the Pacific, Oceania, and Africa this year to join world ranking tournaments. The Commonwealth bet just came from a quarterfinals stint in the 2017 Seogwipo Asia/Oceania Closed Junior Championships—a B1 tournament played in South Korea from Nov. 6 to 12. She slipped past the host’s Ji Youn Lee in the opening round, 4-6, 6-2, 6-1, and then stunned world No. 126 Jiaqi Wang in the second round, 6-2, 6-3, to advance to the quarterfinals. In the Round of 8, Lee lost to 17-year-old Cherry Kim of South Korea, 4-6, 5-7.
Incidentally, Lee could meet Wang again in the Australian Open wild card tournament should the former survive the bottom half of the draw where three other seeded players are out to challenge the CNMI player for the finals berth.
A win over Masuda-Karrasch could pit Lee against No. 7 and China’s Meiling Wang, who is set to face unranked compatriot Zhuoma Ni Ma in the opening round. If Lee gets past Wang, the former may duel either No. 5 Keyi Zhou or No. 2 Cody Wong in the semifinals. The world No. 228 Zhou’s first round opponent is the unranked Qianhui Tang, also from China, while the world No. 153 Hong is set to meet another bet from the host country in world No. 714 Chengyiyi Yuan.
Jiaqi Wang, who was Lee’s partner in the tournament in Korea early this month, is the No. 1 seed in the wild card competition and drew a bye in the opening round to automatically move to the quarterfinals. Joining Wang on the seeded players list at the top half of the draw are No. 6 and world No. 320 Jenny Wong of Hong Kong, and No. 3 and world No. 187 Zheng Hua Xiao and No. 8 and world No. 362 Cong Ying Zhao of China.
Meanwhile, Australian Open 2018 Asia-Pacific Wildcard Playoff tournament director Isabelle Gemmel made special mention of the participation of the two Pacific countries in the qualifier.
“With players from 11 countries competing for the much coveted wildcards, we are particularly pleased to have Abigail Tere-Apisah from Papua New Guinea participating in the women’s main draw and also see the Northern Mariana Islands represented as part of the junior girls draw,” Gemmel was quoted as saying in the tournament’s website.
