The CNMI\u2019s Carol Lee marched into the finals of the girls U12 singles event in the 2014 Australia Post Margaret Court Cup.<\/p>\n
The 11-year-old junior player stunned three seeded foes over the weekend to take the finals berth in the bottom half of the 24-player field. Lee will be battling the girls U12 singles tiara against top-ranked Kelly Gilmour of Australia today at 10am (9am Saipan time) at the Albury Grasscourts in Albury, New South Wales.<\/p>\n
The Commonwealth bet started her campaign in the Post Margaret Court Cup with an outstanding 6-0, 6-0 win over Victoria\u2019s Alex Freire. Then in the second round, Lee earned another straight set victory against the No. 3 seed Hana Kim, 6-2, 6-2, to advance to the quarterfinals. In the Round of 8, he faced another ranked foe and labored a 7-5 triumph over the No. 6 pick Mia Repac in the opening set before cruising to a 6-1 win in the second to keep her perfect record.<\/p>\n
Next up for Lee was second-ranked Caitlyn Portela, who swept her first two opponents, but had her winning streak snapped by the CNMI junior player. Lee notched a 6-2 victory in the opening set to boost her finals bid and completed the upset with an impressive 6-0 win in the second.<\/p>\n
Today\u2019s finals will be a duel between two players who have yet to drop a single set in the tournament. Gilmour, who drew a bye in the first round, blanked Camila Bassi Felix-Vonarx in the second, 6-0, 6-0; swept No. 7 seed Charlie Hargreaves in the quarterfinals, 6-1, 6-1; and topped fourth-ranked Keona Mendis in the upper bracket semifinals, 6-3, 6-0.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, two other CNMI players also competed in the Post Margaret Court Cup and survived the qualifying tournament to make it to the main draw.<\/p>\n
Chris Cajigan gained entry to the main draw after prevailing over Fiji\u2019s Krishhan Raju, 6-2, 6-2, and Australia\u2019s Bailey Thompson, 6-0, 6-0, in the qualifier for the boys U16 singles. In the main draw, Cajigan was pitted against the top-ranked Nelson Loso and pulled off one of the biggest upsets in the tournament. The 15-year-old player bagged a 6-4 triumph in the opening set and then eked out a nail-biting 7-6 win in the second to eliminate his favored foe. However, Cajigan was also shown the exit door in the next round after bowing to Andres Urrego Varon, 3-6, 1-6.<\/p>\n
In the boys U12 singles, Michael Ren defeated Max Morton, 6-0, 6-1, in the qualifying tournament to get a slot on the main draw. Ren went on to drop his opening match in the main draw, losing to Alex Kevill, 0-6, 0-6.<\/p>\n
The three CNMI players are in Australia as part of the Pacific Oceania ITF Touring Team and will be competing in another tournament later this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The CNMI\u2019s Carol Lee marched into the finals of the girls U12 singles event in the 2014 Australia Post Margaret Court Cup.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-174925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174925\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}