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Flashback: Sinclair, Lee break Samoa’s heart
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Posted on Jul 17 2020
CNMI’s Colin Sinclair, left, serves, while Carol Lee gets ready near the net during their mixed doubles game against Samoa’s Leon Soonalole and Eleanor Schuster in the XVI Pacific Games at the Apia Park Tennis Courts in Apia. (Contributed Photo)
No disrespect for the host, but the CNMI’s Colin Sinclair and Carol Lee, on July 17, 2019, did plunge the dagger when they defeated hometown favorites Leon Soonalole and Eleanor Schuster in the mixed doubles event in the XVI Pacific Games at the Apia Park Tennis Courts in Samoa.
Playing in front of the partisan crowd, the two Commonwealth bets seemed to have felt the pressure in the quarterfinal match, allowing the Samoan pair to draw first blood, 6-2.
Needing just one win to complete the upset against the No. 2 seed CNMI duo, Schuster and Soonalole played in the second set with more confidence. However, Lee and Sinclair regrouped and took the victory, 6-2, to remain in contention. The visiting players went on to prevail in the super-tiebreaker third set, 10-3, and disappointed the home crowd.
“Colin and Carol had the most dramatic win of the day in front of several hundreds Samoans,” head coach Jeff Race said.
The mixed doubles quarterfinals was the fourth straight game that Sinclair played that day and it came just 10 minutes after he and Robbie Schorr also won their Round of 8 tiff in the men’s doubles. Sinclair and Schorr, actually played back-to-back matches in the men’s doubles, as they first topped Solomon Islands’ Charlie Junior Benjamin and Popai Leong, 6-0, 6-1 and then swept American Samoa’s Christian Duchnak and Larry Magalasin, 6-3, 6-1, to make it to the semifinals and assure the CNMI a chance to play in the medal round.
Earlier in singles play, Sinclair reached the semis after outclassing Fiji’s William O’Connell, 6-3, 6-3
