{"id":251794,"date":"2017-05-08T06:06:37","date_gmt":"2017-05-07T20:06:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=251794"},"modified":"2017-05-08T06:06:37","modified_gmt":"2017-05-07T20:06:37","slug":"lee-wins-debut-clay-court-morocco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/lee-wins-debut-clay-court-morocco\/","title":{"rendered":"Lee wins debut in clay court in Morocco"},"content":{"rendered":"
Carol Lee is in Morocco and will be playing in the ITF\/CAT North African Circuit at the Oceanic Club Casablancais in Casablance, starting on Monday. (Contributed Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

CNMI junior player Carol Lee had a winning debut in clay court after topping her first round foe in the 2017 Mediterran\u00e9e Avenir last week at the Club Olympique Casablanca Tennis Centre in Casablanca, Morocco.<\/p>\n

Lee was pitted against the host country\u2019s Zainab Bendahhou in the opening round of the Grade 1 tournament and swept her opponent, 6-2, 6-1, to arrange a second round duel against the No. 15 ranked Clara Burel of France.<\/p>\n

The world No. 100 Burel then defeated the No. 353 Lee in the first set, 6-3, but failed to finish the job early when the CNMI fought back in the second with a 6-2 victory. Burel eventually eliminated Lee after posting a 6-1 triumph in the deciding third set.<\/p>\n

Despite getting the early boot, the 15-year-old Lee was not that disappointed with her performance.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy second round game against a Top 100 player from France was not so bad. I went three sets against her and I\u2019m proud that I competed well, especially in the second set,\u201d Lee said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw a lot of good players playing like pros in this Grade 1 tournament. There are a lot of high-level competitors and challengers. The players are mostly from the Europe side, so I get to watch how Europeans play,\u201d the CNMI player added.<\/p>\n

No. 13 Yasmine Mansouri of France ruled the girls singles competition in the 48-player field after pulling off an upset over No. 3 Elysia Bolton of the U.S., 7-5, 6-1.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, after getting the feel of playing in clay court, Lee is much at ease in her second tournament in Morocco\u2014the ITF\/CAT North African Circuit.<\/p>\n

The Grade 3 competition will start today and runs until Saturday at the Oceanic Club Casablancais.<\/p>\n

Lee is in the main draw of the 32-player field, which will also feature majority of the players that saw action in the Mediterran\u00e9e Avenir and others in the Top 400 rankings.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy first time playing a tournament in a clay court made me feel more confident for my next tournament. I wish to get to Round 3 or in quarterfinals. Grade 3 in clay court still has a lot of good players, but I want to get as many points as I could and not to waste this opportunity,\u201d Lee said.<\/p>\n

The CNMI player has 120 singles points and 65 in doubles for a combined 136.25 points. She has been in Morroco since last month and training at the ITF\/CAT Training Centre in Casablanca.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CNMI junior player Carol Lee had a winning debut in clay court after topping her…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":251797,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[26,398,13407,16696],"class_list":["post-251794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-cnmi","tag-france","tag-morocco","tag-zainab-bendahhou"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251794","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\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}