Seeds flourish at Melbourne Park
The December Showdown continues at Melbourne Park with day two of competition in the 2011 Optus 14s Australian Teams Championships played under blue skies and bright sunshine.
Melbourne, 24 November 2011 | David Packman
The December Showdown continues at Melbourne Park with day two of competition in the 2011 Optus 14s Australian Teams Championships played under blue skies and bright sunshine.
To date, the event is unfolding largely as predicted with the top seeds continuing to dominate competition.
View December Showdown 2011 photos
In the girls’ event, the Queensland team made it a clean sweep over Western Australia. As per yesterday, Sara Tomic again led the charge, defeating WA’s Anja Dokic 6-1 6-1 and then backing up to win the doubles with Priscilla Hon. Lizette Cabrera was also equally impressive for the Queenslanders in her straight-sets victory over her WA counterpart Maddison Inglis.
The New Zealand girls also put in a strong performance, beating Tasmania three rubbers to love. Rosie Cheng and Annabel Ellis recorded straight-sets victories in their respective singles matches and then combined to take the doubles tie in easy fashion.
Watch December Showdown 2011 videos
New South Wales (seeded second) and Victoria (seeded fourth) played out the most entertaining girls’ tie of the morning, starting with an enthralling singles match between Pamela Boyanov (NSW) and Katerina Valos (Vic), which was eventually taken out by Boyanov 6-3 in the third.
Maddie Antoun then increased NSW’s lead by clinching the second singles in straight-sets over Michelle Pits. In the closest match of the morning, the doubles went to Victoria 10-6 in the match tiebreak after the teams split the first two sets. In the end, that left NSW victorious two rubbers to one.
South Australia versus Northern Territory was a one-sided affair with the SA girls taking the tie 3-0. The standout was Olivia Ley, who went through her singles and doubles matches without the loss of a single game.
The boys’ competition promised some of the day’s drawcard matches and did not disappoint.
Second and third seeds respectively, Queensland and Western Australia looked set to serve up a great duel. First up, Queenslander Oliver Anderson took on WA’s Jack Lyttle. Both came in with similar credentials but in the end it was Anderson in two sets. The second singles turned out to be a gripping three-set encounter with WA’s Scott Ingram eventually emerging victorious. This left the doubles to decide the tie and Lyttle recovered from his earlier singles loss to successfully partner with Scott Jones and take the tie for Western Australia.
We witnessed some good tennis in all three matches between Victoria and NSW. First up, Jake Delaney defeated Victoria’s Daniel Nolan in a solid hit-out. That was followed by NSW’s Will Berrigan against Victoria’s Marcel Du Sart – an entertaining affair with plenty of highlights in which Berrigan eventually prevailed after a second set tiebreaker. New South Wales again came out on top in the doubles.
South Australia defeated Northern Territory two rubbers to one, with Lliam Bishop and Asykal Azhar both taking out their singles matches in straight sets. The Northern Territory boys struck back in the doubles though, with Kaelan Bates combining with Ben Lye to beat the South Australian pair of Bishop and Mislav Bosnjak.
The New Zealand team made short work of Tasmania with the singles honours going to Kyle Butters and Connor Heap over Tassie cousins Hamish and Tom Youl. Butters then backed up in the doubles for another win. New Zealand 3-0.
After the first round of matches this morning, the cream is starting to rise to the top with Queensland looking very strong in the girls’ event and NSW seemingly cruising in the boys’ competition.
Check out full scores from today’s action and the current ladder positions of the teams here