For now, the Commonwealth\u2019s best brand of table tennis is played across the Saipan Channel after a crack team from Tinian Dynasty Hotel and Casino won the two-day 2004 Marianas Friendship Table Tennis Tournament at the Northern Marianas College Gymnasium.<\/p>\n
After winning 17 of 25 matches Saturday, Tinian ping-pong players continued their success against their Saipan counterparts and won 16 of the last 24 matches Sunday to annex the championship of the goodwill tournament, 33-16.<\/p>\n
Three players from Tinian went undefeated in the round-robin competition, as Luke Lu and Charlie Cheng joined No. 1 player and two-hold specialist Chang Zhan Xue with 7-0 marks.<\/p>\n
Amazingly, Lu, Cheng, and Chang dropped only a grand total of three sets among themselves through the course of the tournament.<\/p>\n
Chang was extended to four sets by Saipan\u2019s own No. 1 Budhi Gurung, 11-5, 11-5, 3-11, 11-7. Cheng, meanwhile, was challenged by Liu Wei in a score of 11-8, 12-10, 9-11, 11-9. Lu, for his part, lost the opening set before rallying to beat Chen Lin Ying, 10-12, 11-6, 11-2, 11-7.<\/p>\n
Next in the win-loss column for Team Tinian was Liang Wei Bin, who compiled a 5-2 mark after wins over Liu, Chen, Mario Espeleta, Peter De Leon, and Steven Lim. The two losses of Bin came courtesy of Gurung and Saipan\u2019s No. 2 Su Yong Dong.<\/p>\n
Robin Lu (4-3), Liu Fu Liang (2-5), and Alfred Yue (1-6) make up the rest of the seven-man contingent from Tinian Dynasty. Lu won against Liu, Lim, De Leon, and Espeleta. Liu Fu beat Lim and De Leon, while Yue\u2019s lone win came against De Leon.<\/p>\n
Gurung and Su were the only players from Saipan to finish above .500 in the tournament. Both players compiled identical 4-3 marks with all those setbacks courtesy of Tinian\u2019s Top 3.<\/p>\n
Gurung swept Liang in three easy sets and then got tested by Liu Fu in the first two before eking out an 11-9, 12-10, 11-1 triumph. The Topline employee then had to survive a grind-out 9-11, 11-1, 9-11, 11-5, 11-3 win over Lu. <\/p>\n
Su topped Lu in four hard-fought sets, 11-3, 11-8, 8-11, 11-6, then downed Liang in another four-set thriller, 11-4, 9-11, 11-8, 11-9. He also upended Liu Fu in four. The Iron Chef Restaurant cook then dominated Yue in three straight sets.<\/p>\n
Chen had a lot of close calls go against him and finished with a 3-4 mark. He defeated Lu, Liu, and Yue, but surrendered losses to the Top 3 plus Liang.<\/p>\n
Liu and Espeleta posted similar 2-5 records. Liu downed Liu Fu in four sets and then swept Yu. Espeleta, for his part, topped Yue in four and then had to outlasted Liu Fu 12-10, 9-11, 6-11, 11-8, 12-10.<\/p>\n
Lim\u2019s only victory came at the expense of Yue and it was in five sets 11-8, 11-9, 9-11, 9-11, 12-10. De Leon, meanwhile, had heartbreak written all over his seven defeats. The closest the Filipino table tennis player came to recording a win was against Liu Fu, when he led 6-11, 11-8, 11-5 before losing the next two sets 11-5, 11-5.<\/p>\n
Organizer Marianas Amateur Table Tennis Association handed each of the seven members of the Tinian team individual trophies and one handsome three-foot tall championship trophy during an awards banquet held Sunday evening at the Iron Chef Restaurant in Garapan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For now, the Commonwealth\u2019s best brand of table tennis is played across the Saipan Channel after a crack team from Tinian Dynasty Hotel and Casino won the two-day 2004 Marianas Friendship Table Tennis Tournament at the Northern Marianas College Gymnasium.<\/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-85323","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\/85323","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=85323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85323\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}