Lee stays in hunt for singles crown

Carol Lee makes a baseline return to her and Ayana Rengiiil’s Japanese foes during the girls doubles quarterfinals game in the 2016 IT&E Northern Marianas Juniors Championships yesterday at the Pacific Islands Club hard courts.
(Roselyn B. Monroyo)

The CNMI’s Carol Lee gave herself an early graduation present in a form of a quarterfinal berth in the girls singles event of the 2016 IT&E Northern Marianas Juniors Championships.

Lee booked a Round of 8 ticket in the ITF Junior ranking tournament following a 7-5, 6-1 victory over Hong Kong’s Avril Look yesterday at the Pacific Islands Club hard courts. Her afternoon match against Look ended around 2pm and she had to return to the court about two hours later to play in the doubles quarterfinals game with Palau’s Ayana Rengiil. Unfortunately, Lee and Rengiil bowed to the Japanese pair of Yuna Fukumuro and Haruka Hoshino in a super tiebreak third-set match, 6-4, 4-6, 5-10. The CNMI bet’s doubles match wrapped up around 6pm and she had to rush home to prepare for her middle school graduation last night at Saipan Community School.

After a busy schedule yesterday, Lee will be back to the PIC court at 8:30am today to challenge the No. 4 seed Yuelin Chen of Chinese-Taipei for one of the semis berth at the lower half of the draw. Qualifiers Saki Oyama and No. 8 seed Mana Kawamura will duel for the other semis seat at the borrom half of the draw. Oyama pulled off an upset against the second-ranked Claudia Ng of Hong Kong, 6-0, 6-3, while Kawamura downed Hoshino, 6-1, 6-4.

At the top half of the draw, it will be No. 1 seed and Japan’s Rika Tanaka versus Rengiil and No. 2 pick Sara Tsukamoto of the U.S. against Hong Kong’s Hong Yi Wong. Wong advanced after a 6-4, 6-4 triumph against Chinese-Taipei’s Ting-Chieh Wei, while Tsukamoto eliminated Fukumuro, 6-1, 6-2. Rengiil earned a quarterfinals slot following her 6-2, 6-0 victory over Hong Kong’s Alicia Yue, while Tanaka shut down compatriot Yuki Sakurai, 6-0, 6-0.

Meanwhile, the quarterfinal cast in the boys singles division was also completed yesterday.

Making it to the Round of 8 at the upper half of the draw were the top-ranked Ching-Yang Meng of Chinese-Taipei and Japan’s Kairi Inoue, Ryu Matsuda, and Taiyo Yamanaka. Japan also dominated the quarterfinalists list at the bottom half of the draw with Fumiya Yoshino, Ryoma Matsushita, Seita Watanabe, and Tsubasa Kato advancing.

Kato and his partner Yusuke Miyai are also in contention for the doubles crown as they defeated compatriot Soma Yokoyama and Hong Kong’s Jonathan Zhang in the quarterfinals, 7-5, 6-4. The Japanese pair will play Chinese-Taipei’s Ting-Hao Hsu and Cheng-Chieh Wang in the semis.

The other Final Four pairing will have the top-ranked duo of Ryuki Matsuda and Yohan Song meeting No. 4 seed Kai Kawano and Seita Watanabe.