{"id":257749,"date":"2017-08-08T06:06:30","date_gmt":"2017-08-07T20:06:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=257749"},"modified":"2017-08-08T06:06:30","modified_gmt":"2017-08-07T20:06:30","slug":"carol-eases-first-round","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/carol-eases-first-round\/","title":{"rendered":"Carol eases through first round"},"content":{"rendered":"
Carol Lee, seen here in last year\u2019s ITF Juniors tournament on Saipan, swept her foe in the opening round of the 2017 Oceania Closed Junior Championships yesterday at the Regional Training Center in Lautoka, Fiji. (Contributed Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The CNMI\u2019s Carol Lee needed only two sets to win her opening round match in the 2017 Oceania Closed Junior Championships yesterday at the Regional Training Center in Lautoka, Fiji.<\/p>\n

Lee outclassed Australia\u2019s Grace Schumaster in the first set, 6-3, and then demolished her Land Down Under foe in the second, 6-0, to cruise to the second round of the ITF Juniors event. In Round 2, the Commonwealth bet will be pitted against New Zealand\u2019s Elys Saguil-Ventura, who eliminated Lee\u2019s Pacific Oceania teammate Naia Guitton of Tahiti, 6-4, 6-3. Lee and Saguil-Ventura will battle for the quarterfinals slot today.<\/p>\n

The fourth seeded Lee is at the lower half of the 32-player field and though she is among the favorites in the tournament, she does not want to think way ahead and be overconfident.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really want to win but I have to manage my expectations and just take it one match at a time. If I think ahead I could lose focus. There\u2019s always pressure to perform well and my expectations of myself are always high regardless of seeding or draws. I\u2019ve worked hard on the mental aspect of my game, trying to embrace the pressure rather than give in to it,\u201d Lee said.<\/p>\n

She added that the level of competition in the Oceania Closed Championship is so high that even seeded players should not be complacent or else they would find themselves out of the race.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe competition is tough and all the players have worked hard to peak at this tournament as it\u2019s the strongest ITF tournament in the Pacific every year,\u201d the CNMI player said.<\/p>\n

Several players ranked in the Top 300 are entered in the competition and also suiting up in the B2 tournament are nationally ranked players from Australia, New Zealand, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Samoa, and American Samoa.<\/p>\n

Lee\u2019s fellow CNMI player Isabel Heras got a taste of the difficult games in the tournament after bowing to Australia\u2019s Zara Brankovic, 0-6, 1-6, in yesterday\u2019s opening round. Another Commonwealth representative\u2014Robbie Schorr\u2014also lost his first singles match when he fell to Aussie Dylan Heap, 0-6, 4-6.<\/p>\n

Schorr will also play in the doubles and will team up with Guam\u2019s Mason Caldwell. The CNMI-Guam combination will have its opening match today against Camden Camacho, also from Guam, and Marlin Hannam of Vanuatu.<\/p>\n

In the girls doubles, Lee is joining forces with Australia\u2019s Oleksadra Kalachova and the fourth-seeded pair will duel the Aussie duo of Isabella Bozicevic and Helena Spiridis today for a spot in the quarterfinals. Heras, on the other hand, is partnering with Milan Krish, also of Australia, and they will challenge Roopa Bains and Megan Smith.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The CNMI\u2019s Carol Lee needed only two sets to win her opening round match in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":257764,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[195,26,51,527],"class_list":["post-257749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-australia","tag-cnmi","tag-guam","tag-vanuatu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257749","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=257749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257749\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/257764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}