Ekpenyong, Moses lead top seeds to CBN Junior Tennis semifinals

Top seeds at the on-going CBN Open Junior Tennis Championships had to fight their ways out of tough situations to qualify for the semifinals of the competition.

This was evident in most of the final group round-robin matches decided yesterday in Lagos Thursday.

In the Girls 16 where four girls, Rebecca Ekpenyong, Omolayo Bamidele, Omolade Aderemi and Favour Moses, have come to regard semifinal places as their birthright, two of them faced very stiff opposition with one of the matches going into a final set decider.

Mary Udofa from Kogi, who represented Nigeria in the African 14s Championship, took on number one seed Ekpenyong, losing in two close sets – 10-7, 12-10. Chidinma Ezeh from Anambra lost the first set but rallied back to take the second set and then lost steam in the final set to concede the semifinal slot to Aderemi 10-7, 6-10, 10-4. Moses and Bamidele had easy matches to move into the semifinals, which will be done by ballot and is expected to be explosive.

The top two seeds in all the four categories won their group playoffs with David Dawariye of Rivers and Daniel Adeleye from Ekiti expected to have a rematch of their Chevron Championship boys’ 16 finals.

The highly anticipated rematch between Seun ‘Nadal’ Ogunsakin and Mohammed Idris of Abuja will not take place as Idris has moved up to the boys 14, where he proved himself against second seed Ganiyu Mubarak of Oyo State, losing 10-3, 10-12, 10-5.

The semifinal matches have been scheduled to start at 10.00 a.m. at the National Stadium Tennis Centre Lagos today, while the finals will take place at the Lagos Lawn Tennis Club, Race Course tomorrow.