Mid Canterbury Junior Tourney-South Canterbury Success

It was a weekend of extreme temperatures with Sunday testing players and supporters with rain and freezing temperatures,however perfect tennis conditions and warm weather was the order of the day for Monday -finals day. Again players that competed learned valuable lessons that only tournament play can give.Tennis is a unique game and a match is never won until the final handshake,Two South Canterbury players both staged comebacks to win their respective singles final Lawrence Darling 12s Boys and Annabel Ellis 12s Girls.

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Ellis had lost the first set 6-4 and was down 3-1 n the second against Otago's Hanna English ,two contrasting players Ellis relying on attack and English relying on defense.Ellis started the match making many unforced errors but gradually worked her way back in the match with better point construction.Ellis won the match 4-6;6-4;6-3 .Darling lost the first set also 7-5 to Young Baek who was unseeded and had earlier disposed of South Canterbury second seed Sam Lane 6-3 6-2 in a major upset.
Darling started slowly with numerous double faults as Baek took advantage.The Key Game was the first game of the second set which Darling won and kept this advantage throughout the next two sets as Baek wilted in the heat and the pressure of playing from behind.Darling finished stronger of the two and deserved the win.George Wigley defeated Ryan Ammar in the final of the 16 boys singles,Ammar had a good win in his semi final against Canterbury 16s winner Joe Bray 6-2 6-2.Ammar found the power of Wigley to much on the day with Wigley serving well throughout the match a key.Wigley took advantage of many short balls from Ammar and was on the front foot for most of the match winning 6-3 6-1.South Canterbury had a good squad of players participating and featured in many consolation plate wins and main draw doubles wins, many players came away learning lots of important lessons to work on and no doubt the coach will be focusing on these at your next session. Well done to George Gibson on competing in his first tournament with his new single hand backhand.You can check all the results at this link