Tinian completes ping-pong qualifiers

Tinian Dynasty Hotel and Casino named its six-man team for this weekend’s 4th Tinian Saipan Goodwill Tournament and leading the cast are the island’s one-two punch—Luke Lu and Charlie Cheng.

Lu finished the single round-robin qualifiers with an immaculate 5-0 win-loss mark, which included a 15-1 record in games played. The only game he dropped was during his match against Bright Liu.

Cheng will be Tinian’s No. 2 player behind Lu after compiling a 4-1 record. His only loss was on the hands of Lu. Other than that, he was perfect during the tournament and scored 3-0 shutouts against No. 3 Liang Wei Bin, No. 4 Robin Lu, No. 5 Liu, and No. 6 Alfred Yue.

Lu was declared the singles champion of last December’s 3rd Saipan-Tinian Goodwill Table Tennis Tournament with Cheng coming a close second.

Liang (3-2), Robin Lu (2-3), Liu (1-4), and Yue (0-5) make up the rest of Tinian’s six-man crew that will oppose the contingent from Saipan, which will be represented by Marianas Amateur Table Tennis Association stalwarts Su Yong Dong, Chen Lin Ying, Budhi Gurung, Mario Espeleta, Con Pobre, and Steve Lim.

The Tinian-Saipan goodwill tournament would consist of both singles and doubles matches and two round-robin rounds. The first round will be best-of-five affairs, while the second round would use a best-of-seven format. Tinian has won the past three goodwill tournaments against its northern neighbor.

Coinciding with the staging of the Tinian-Saipan goodwill competition is the Tinian leg of the qualifying round for the Micronesian Games, set here on Saipan from June 23 to July 3.

Su topped the Saipan leg of the 6th Micronesian Games qualifiers for the CNMI National Men’s Table Tennis Team after beating Chen in the finals. Chen was second followed by Gurung, Espeleta, Pobre, and Peter De Leon.

Like swimming, triathlon, baseball, and softball, table tennis is one of the sports the CNMI is expected to do well and medal in the Games.