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Kim successfull in defense of Challenge crown
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Posted on Jun 02 2008
For the second straight year, Dylan Seong Kwan Kim has won the singles competition of the 5th Annual Guam International Tennis Open’s 16-player Male Singles Challenge Invitational and Eight-Team Men’s Doubles Draw.
Kim, who is ranked 965 in singles and 1,406 in doubles, beat compatriot Min Hyeok Cho, 6-3, 6-2, in last Sunday’s finale at the Hilton Guam Resort & Spa.
The win allowed the 23-year-old Korean to once again raise the “Silver Loving Cup” trophy of the singles competition after winning it all in 2007.
Kim won $2,500 and a return trip to next year’s tournament courtesy of Continental Airlines. Min Hyeok Cho took home $1,500 and a runner-up trophy.
He advanced to the championship round after beating Japan’s Tetsuya Chaen in the semifinals late Saturday evening.
Chaen was the highest seed among the Final Four of the tournament at No. 527 in the ATP rankings. He, however, was also the oldest semifinalist at 35 years old.
Kim’s finals opponent Cho, for his part, was the first to book a finals seat after the 21-year-old got the better of Jobe, who is No. 992 in the ATP rankings, 4-6, 7-5, 6-3, last May 31.
In the doubles competition, Satoshi Iwabuchi and Hiroyasu Sato of Japan repulsed the Hawaiian pair of Ikaika Jobe and Brad Lum-Tucker, 6-3, 7-6 (3).
Iwabuchi and Sato each win $850 and trophies as champions. Jobe and Lum-Tucker, meanwhile, each won $500 and trophies as the runners-up.
Iwabuchi and Sato advanced to the doubles championship after beating Cho and Kim, 6-4, 6-4, last Saturday, while Jobe and Lum-Tucker posted a 6-4, 5-7 (10-6) victory over Choi and Park in the same day.
Two weeks earlier, former Paci-fic Oceania Davis Cup player Lency Tenai won the men’s open singles as well as the doubles of the preliminary round of the 5th Annual Guam International Tennis Open.
Playing at the same hotel where he work as the tennis instructor under the Tennis Academy of Guam, Tenai won the men’ singles championship after handily beating Shozo Nishiguchi, 6-2, 6-2, in the finals held last May 25.
Tenai earlier teamed up with Ken Klocke to win the men’s doubles open, upending the tandem of Bill Camacho and Benjamin Dunn, 6-3, 6-2.
