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Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Catch Na­tion­al Ju­nior Ten­nis Cham­pi­onships...

Gomez stars on return

by

20100411

Flori­da-based play­er Liam Gomez made his re­turn to T&T count, when he won both the Boys' Un­der 18 Sin­gles and Dou­bles ti­tles, on the last day of the 22nd An­nu­al Catch Na­tion­al Ju­nior Ten­nis Cham­pi­onships at the Ed­die Tay­lor Pub­lic Courts in St Clair yes­ter­day. Gomez beat Javier Lewis 7-5, 6-2 in the Sin­gles fi­nal and lat­er paired up with Luke De Caires to sub­due Lewis and Jualon Greig 6-4, 6-3. When he took the court at 9am, the 17-year-old was still re­cov­er­ing from his four-hour long semi­fi­nal against De Caires on Thurs­day, which he won 6-7 (3), 6-4, 6-3. "I didn't have that much en­er­gy and I wasn't feel­ing too good," he said af­ter­wards. "It was a tough match. Javier played some re­al­ly smart ten­nis. He was quick and wasn't miss­ing much but I hung in there and fi­nal­ly won.

"I think what made the dif­fer­ence was that I played a bit more ag­gres­sive­ly than he did. I came to the net to fin­ish off the points while he was spend­ing a lot of en­er­gy on the base­line." Lewis's semi­fi­nal al­so turned in­to a marathon when he and Kee­gan De Sil­va fought to a 3-6, 6-3, 7-5 score­line. "I could have played a lit­tle bet­ter but I was still tired from the match­es I played," he said. "Still, it felt great to test my­self against a T&T play­er who has been train­ing in the States." At 6-5 in the first set, very lit­tle sep­a­rat­ed the two play­ers who had been test­ing each oth­er's pa­tience with long, ex­haust­ing ral­lies amid the dis­trac­tions of the bas­ket­ball game next door. Gomez ground out his points pa­tient­ly and went for his big shots when the times were right.

On his first set point, he played a ball that, un­no­ticed by the of­fi­cials, drift­ed a frac­tion long and Lewis, in re­ply, placed his back­hand wide. To his cred­it, Lewis took the de­ci­sion with ma­tu­ri­ty and turned his at­ten­tion to the sec­ond set. The test of wills con­tin­ued as Gomez kept his op­po­nent busy by chang­ing the pace of the ball and plac­ing his shots in­to dif­fer­ent ar­eas. Af­ter a tense start, he broke Lewis's serve to go up 4-2 and once more af­ter that to se­cure the ti­tle. He will head back to the Sad­dle­brook Prep School to­mor­row af­ter a three-week stay in T&T which al­so in­clud­ed a semi­fi­nal run in the T&T ITF In­ter­na­tion­al Ju­nior Cir­cuit tour­na­ment.

Boys' Un­der 12 play­er Je­lani David­son al­so copped a dou­ble crown, start­ing with a 6-1, 6-1 whip­ping of his part­ner Nabeel Mo­hammed in the Sin­gles fi­nal and then team­ing up with him to thrash Aaron Soo Ping Chow and Ryan Thomas 6-2, 6-1 for the Dou­bles ti­tle. In the morn­ing's oth­er Sin­gles fi­nal, Joshua Abra­ham be­came the Boys' Un­der 14 cham­pi­on when he topped Elan Mendes 6-2, 6-3. Abra­ham then re­turned to the court with his broth­er Ty to face Ross Hack­shaw and Scott Lanser in the Boys' Un­der 14 Dou­bles fi­nal in which the lat­ter pair won 6-2, 1-6, 10-8.


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