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Lee to join 3 Juniors ITF tourneys in NZ
Carol Lee gets ready to serve during her and Steven Goodwin’s doubles game against Jeff Race and Isabel Heras in the 8th TanHoldings Tennis Classic held early this month at the Fiesta Resort & Spa Saipan. (Roselyn B. Monroyo)
The CNMI’s Carol Lee will be busy at the start of 2017, as three Juniors ITF tournaments in New Zealand await her.
Up first for Lee, who will leave Saipan on Jan. 8 to join the Pacific Oceania Touring Team in New Zealand, is the 2017 Wilson Tennis Canterbury ITF in Christchurch. The Commonwealth player’s first competition for the New Year will run from Jan. 17 to 22 and it is a Grade 4 tournament, which awards 40 and 30 ranking points to the singles and doubles champions, respectively.
Palau’s Ayana Rengiil and Fiji’s Mulan Kamoe will join Lee in the Wilson Tennis Canterbury ITF, which has the Switzerland’s Lulu Radovcic as its highest-ranked player in the acceptance list at No. 109. Forty-six players from around the world are on the acceptance list, while 26 are on the alternate roster.
For her second tournament, Lee will head to Wellington to participate in the 2017 Tecnifibre Tennis Central Championships, another Grade 4 event. The competition in Wellington will take place at the Renouf Tennis Centre from Jan. 23 to 28.
From Wellington, Lee will go to Auckland for the NZ ITF Summer Championships 2017, which will be played at the Scarbro Tennis Centre from Jan. 30 to Feb. 4. The CNMI junior player’s final tournament in New Zealand is a Grade 3 event, which awards 60 points to the singles champion and 50 to the doubles winners.
Lee, who just turned 15 last Wednesday, is hoping to get as many Juniors ITF points as she can in the three tournaments in New Zealand to move up to the world rankings. As of Dec. 19, Lee is ranked No. 470 in the world. She achieved her highest ranking (No. 443) in July after competing in a couple of tournaments in Fiji and New Caledonia.
“I hope I could make it to the finals of the tournaments in New Zealand so I could go up to the Top 200,” said Lee, who early this month played in the men’s open singles and ruled the division, beating her fellow junior players and a couple of veterans.
To prepare for her competitions in New Zealand, Lee is training with her dad Dong Min and brother Sean.
After her trip to New Zealand, the CNMI player will head to Fiji to train at the ITF facility until April or early May.
