Two Border tennis rising stars came extremely close to singles glory at the Victorian Junior Grasscourt Championships in Wodonga.
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Albury youngster Rory Parnell made it all the way to the final of the under 12s boys singles, but was edged out 6-4, 6-3 by the tournament’s second seed Paul Truong.
Fellow Albury product Mercy Eze also put together an impressive run in the under 16s girls singles, but was defeated in the final, 6-4, 6-1 by Queenslander Hannah Morgan.
Tournament director Michael Robin was pleased with the overall running of the respected local event.
“This event is such a critical one to the centre because it shows off the grass courts to all of the higher ranked played across the country and all the new ones say they’ll be back next year,” Robin said.
“We had a bit of rain in the middle, which slowed us down for a little while, but we got through that no problems.
“We try to get as many events as we can, but they’re very limited these days.
This year we had a good range as the top eight players in every age group were at a very high standard, which is as good as we’ve seen for a long while.
- Tournament director Michael Robin
“Tennis Victoria had something like 250 applications for tournaments last year and they only have 80 tournaments available, so there is always people wanting more.”
Robin couldn’t speak highly enough of the talented juniors at the tournament, particularly the local prospects.
“They (Parnell and Eze) did really well. Being a gold tournament, it’s a very high standard of players that turn up,” he said.
“To get through that and get to a final in gold event is very promising for the local talent.
“It was probably the best (standard) we’ve seen.
“We’ve had some very high seeds turn up to the event before and had one guy number 35 in the country go to one of our events.
“But this year we had a good range as the top eight players in every age group were at a very high standard, which is as good as we’ve seen for a long while.”
In the open men’s and women’s events, unseeded Sydney talent Blake Bayldon took the title from number five seed Nicholas Turnham, 6-4, 6-0, while the top-ranked Linda Huang went back-to-back on the Border after also claiming last week’s Margaret Court Cup.
Huang comfortably dispatched the number two seed Sonja Balic, 6-1, 6-2.
“I picked Cody (Brackenreg) to win the men’s singles and he went out in the semi-finals, but it pretty well went to plan on the last day,” Robin said.
