{"id":279198,"date":"2018-07-02T06:06:01","date_gmt":"2018-07-01T20:06:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=279198"},"modified":"2018-07-02T06:06:01","modified_gmt":"2018-07-01T20:06:01","slug":"carol-rules-fiji-tourney","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/carol-rules-fiji-tourney\/","title":{"rendered":"Carol rules Fiji tourney"},"content":{"rendered":"
Singles champion Carol Lee, left, and runner-up Ikumi Yamazaki pose with their special trophies during the awards ceremony for the South Pacific Open Junior Championships 2018 in Fiji yesterday. (Fiji Tennis Photo)
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The CNMI\u2019s Carol Lee had a triumphant return to Fiji after taking the singles crown in the South Pacific Open Junior Championships 2018 yesterday.<\/p>\n

The No. 1 seed lived up to expectations after dominating No. 11 and Japan\u2019s Ikumi Yamazaki in the finals, 6-2, 6-1, at the Regional Tennis Centre Nadovu Park in Lautoka.<\/p>\n

The title victory over the Japanese was Lee\u2019s fifth via sweep, as the Commonwealth eliminated her four other opponents after only two sets. In the semifinals, Lee defeated No. 10 Elys Saguil-Ventura of New Zealand, 6-3, 6-2, while earlier in the quarterfinals, the former topped No. 9 Mio Kozaki of Japan, 6-2, 6-2. The 16-year-old\u2019s two other wins in the early games in the upper half of the draw were against Ayaka Koga of Japan, 6-0, 6-2, and versus No. 16 Komaki Ido of Australia, 6-2, 6-0.<\/p>\n

At the lower half of the draw, Yamazaki stunned three higher-seeded opponents to set up a finals duel against Lee. The Japanese first ousted No. 5 Jennifer Ikida of the U.S. in the third round, 7-5, 6-1, and then booted out No. 2 Chiara Di Tommaso of Australia in the quarterfinals, 7-5, 6-0. For her last win in the tournament. Yamazaki recorded it against compatriot and No. 7 Kokomi Koyama, 6-2, 6-3.<\/p>\n

Yamazaki attempted for another upset against Lee, but the CNMI junior player was on a mission and ended the Japanese\u2019s giant killing. Lee came into Fiji to earn the championship she missed last year when she lost to Papua New Guinea\u2019s Violet Apisah, 0-6, 4-6.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Lee also played in the doubles, but missed a return trip to the finals when she and Di Tommaso fell to Yamazaki and Manami Ukita in the semifinals last Saturday. The No. 6 Japanese took only two sets to eliminate the No. 1 pair of Lee and Di Tommaso, 6-1, 6-3, however the former\u2019s victory went to naught, as Hong Kong\u2019s Wing Ka Lin and Jingyi Wang took the title after getting the win in the finals via walkover.<\/p>\n

Before losing to Ukita and Yamazaki, Lee and Di Tommaso moved to the semis following their triumps over Japan\u2019s Kanami Hayashige and Ayaka Koga, 6-4, 6-3, and Ivy Mclean of New Zealand and Helena Spiridis of Australia, 6-4, 6-1.<\/p>\n

In other results, the boys singles championship also went to a No. 1 seed player in India\u2019s Mann Shah, who defeated No. 11 Ayato Arakaki, 6-4, 6-0.<\/p>\n

In the doubles, Shah teamed up with compatriot Aaryan Zaveri to slip past Japan\u2019s Roya Ishi and Kamil Kozlowski of Australia, 7-6 (4), 6-7 (3), 10-6.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The CNMI\u2019s Carol Lee had a triumphant return to Fiji after taking the singles crown…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":279199,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[195,17423,164,170],"class_list":["post-279198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-australia","tag-ayaka-koga","tag-fiji","tag-japan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279198","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=279198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279198\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}