Nine-year-old Kriz Lim weathered the tough stand put by female rival Jayden Ballado and pulled off a 2-4, 4-0, 4-2 win today to claim the crown in the 10-under unisex finals of the 2018 Philippine Sports Commission-Philippine Tennis Association Age Group tournament at the Rizal Memorial Tennis Center.
Lim, one of the promising newcomers this year, held steady with his baseline game in finishing off Ballado.
“Maganda po ang laro ko. Nahabol ko ang lahat ng bola niya,” said the fifth grader of Lyceum-North Luzon in Urdaneta, Pangasinan.
It was Lim’s best finish this year since he started playing competitive tennis last year.
Coached by his father Alvin Lim, the young Kriz bounced back from a first-set loss by shutting out Ballado in the second set.
In the third set, Lim took the lead and held it after breaking serve in the fourth set, 3-1.
In other matches, Lucas Sebastian Co prevailed over Sergius Canque, 4-1, 4-0, in another race-to-4 encounter in the 8-under unisex finals.
Michael Dylan Jimenez toppled Joshua Diva, 6-3, 0-6, 6-4, in the 12-under boys’ finals.
The tournament comes on a week that the Philta is taking strides in the advancement of the development of age-group tennis in the country.
The Philta recently held a five-day national training camp that was held in cooperation with the International Tennis Federation.
The camp, which ran from Dec. 14 to 18 at the Rizal Memorial Tennis Center in Malate, Manila, was led by Jonathan Stubbs, the newly appointed ITF Development Officer for South, Southeast and East Asia.
Stubbs, who started on his new role in January 11 months ago, is supervising coaches in teaching the top four players boys and girls in 12 to 16 years old levels from Luzon, Visayas, Mindanao, and Metro Manila.