Schorr to play in New Zealand

Robbie Schorr will leave Saipan today to compete in New Zealand. (Contributed Photo)

CNMI junior player Robbie Schorr will leave Saipan this morning to compete in three tournaments in New Zealand.

Schorr’s first stop will be Wellington for the 2019 Tecnifibre Wellington ITF Juniors that will run from Jan. 21 to 26 at the Renouf Tennis Centre. The event is a Grade 4 tournament, which awards as much as 60 rankings points in singles and 45 in doubles.

“I will try my best to get as many ranking points as I can,” said Schorr, who trained four to five times a week to prepare for the series of competitions in New Zealand.

“I played practice matches with Jimin Woo,” the 16-year-old said.

The CNMI player is ranked No. 985 in the world, barging into the Top 1,000 at the start of the year after ending the season at No. 1,297.

Schorr will play both in the singles and doubles event in the Wellington tournament and is entered in the main draw of both divisions. The Saipan International School student and Vanuatu’s Clement Mainguy are the only Pacific bets seeing action in the six-day event, which has Japan’s Taiyo Hirano (world No. 353) as the highest ranked player in the field.

From Wellington, Schorr will head to Christchurch for the 2019 Wilson Tennis Canterbury ITF Juniors that will take place at the TrustPower Wilding Park Tennis Centre from Jan. 28 to Feb. 2. The competition in Christchurch is another Grade 4 event and again Schorr is on the main draw of both the singles and doubles matches. Ukraine’s Eric Vanshelboim is the top-ranked player in the main draw at No. 58, while four more Top 200 players are also joining the Wilson Tennis event.

For his last tournament in New Zealand, Schorr will be seeing action in a higher level contest—the NZ ITF Summer Championships 2019.

The tournament will be held at the Scarbro Tennis Centre in Auckland from Feb. 5 to 9. It’s a Grade 3 event and offers 100 and 75 ranking points to the singles and doubles champions, respectively.

The main and qualifying draws rosters for the NZ ITF Summer Championships have yet to be completed, but world No. 43 Stephan Stricker of Switzerland and Vanshelboim are among the favorites in the singles player. Schorr, as of yesterday, was listed on the alternate list.

The CNMI player was given an opportunity to compete in the New Zealand tournaments after ruling the boys U16 singles event in the 2018 Pacific Oceania Junior Championships held in Fiji. Schorr clinched the division championship after pulling the rug under No. 1 seed Jeremy Guines of Tahiti in the finals, 6-4, 6-3.