{"id":368182,"date":"2022-05-11T06:02:19","date_gmt":"2022-05-10T20:02:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=368182"},"modified":"2022-05-11T06:02:19","modified_gmt":"2022-05-10T20:02:19","slug":"lam-to-represent-oceania-in-wimbledon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/lam-to-represent-oceania-in-wimbledon\/","title":{"rendered":"Lam to represent Oceania in Wimbledon"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_368171\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-368171\" style=\"width: 600px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Wimbledon-pix-LamWb.jpg\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-368171\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lam<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>A former tennis prodigy from the CNMI will play in the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club two months from now after La Hunn Lam has been invited as a wildcard entry representing Oceania in the 2022 Wimbledon.<\/p>\n<p>The 12-year-old learned how to play tennis in the CNMI under the tutelage of CNMI national coach and Northern Mariana Islands Tennis Association president Jeff Race before moving to Europe prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>He now resides in Mallorca, Spain and one of his coaches is Tony Nadal, uncle of 21-time Grand Slam winner Rafael Nadal.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy initial reaction was too amazed, my jaw dropped. I\u2019m trying my best to train harder with great motivation. I am excited, honored, and elated that I can\u2019t express it in words,\u201d Lam said in a message to <em>Saipan Tribune.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Race, for his part, said getting invited to one of the four majors in tennis is a great opportunity for Lam.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think it\u2019s great that Wimbledon is adding a 14\u2019s competition. It\u2019s an incredible opportunity for a young athlete like La Hunn. I know that he\u2019s a young guy that absolutely loves the sport and I believe that this can be something that motivates him like nothing else could,\u201d the NMSA Hall of Famer said.<\/p>\n<p>Race actually will be accompanying Lam to Wimbledon in July as he\u2019s been selected by the Oceania Tennis Federation to serve as his former ward\u2019s coach in the world-class competition.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor me personally? Wow! It\u2019s a dream. I walked onto center court after visiting the Wimbledon office about 40 years ago. Now I have the honor to be going there as a coach. I don\u2019t know what kind of system that they may adopt for entry into this event in the future, but I hope that the ITF (International Tennis Federation) continues to give wildcards to regional associations like our OTF so that more kids like La Hunn get an opportunity like this,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Race said he expects to join Lam in England by late June or early July.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A former tennis prodigy from the CNMI will play in the All England Lawn Tennis&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":368170,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[38],"class_list":["post-368182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-saipan-tribune"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368182","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\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368182\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/368170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}