Saipan netters strike back

After watching Tinian romp away with two championships the night before, Saipan made sure to keep first-place trophies on home turf Monday night in the 2nd Annual Toyota Tennis Tournaments at the American Memorial Park tennis courts.

Unorthodox Art Lopez and power-hitter Romy “Colonel” Sotto won the men’s 4.0 doubles championship, going the distance before outlasting the pesky pair of Buddy Garote and Hector Benitez in three and a half hours of exciting tennis.

Lopez and Sotto raced to a 3-0 lead in the opening set by negating their opponents’ speed by using their height and reach advantage at the net.

They made the points short and sweet and ended them with authoritative smashes on the net. With the duo’s power game on grand display, they were able to take a 1-0 lead in the best-of-three final.

Lopez and Sotto got overly aggressive and a bit greedy in the second, hurrying shots and miscalculating volleys that more often than not resulted in unforced errors to go down 0-4.

It also didn’t help that Garote and Benitez hustled in almost every play, running down Lopez and Sotto’s deep ground strokes and hitting winners at opportune times, as the diminutive duo tied the set-count at a set apiece.

Garote and Benitez rode on that momentum in the third and were in the verge of an upset of Buster Douglas-Mike Tyson proportions going up 4-1 as Lopez and Sotto seemed all but finished.

Leading 5-3 and serving for the championship, the tandem, however, succumbed to pressure and allowed Lopez and Sotto to rally and tie the count at 5-5. Lopez and Sotto then broke their opponents’ serve in the 11th game.

Lopez and Sotto then won the match when Lopez’s lob sailed past Garote and Benitez’s racquets to drop just inside the line to complete the comeback 6-4, 2-6, 7-5.

“It was a tough win. Buddy and Hector played one of their best tennis in the second and third sets but I just told Romy not to give up and keep on playing hard. We caught a break with them serving for championship point and luckily it went our way the rest of the match,” said Lopez.

In the men’s 2.0, Orly De Leon and Roy Ocanada installed themselves as the pair to watch in the future, winning the beginners’ division with a 7-5, 6-4 victory over Tots Santos and Reggie Reyes.

The finals cast in the men’s 4.5 also was also completed Monday after youth netters Keith Gabaldon and Ji Hoon Heo defeated the older pair of Richard Asuncion and Gerald Narciso 7-5, 6-2.

Gabaldon and Heo will face off against Nicolas Son and Lito Cabrera tonight for the title.

The championship of the women’s 4.0, meanwhile, will be played on Friday with the May-September tandem of Ligaya Paculanang and Audrey Motto taking on Merle Hudkins and Ayumi Cajigan.

The championship of the men’s open between last year’s runner-up Daniel Son and Cabrera and Peter Loyola and Heo was played last night, albeit results were still not available as of press time.