T&T’s ten­nis ace Kale Dal­la Cos­ta claimed two wins out of three match­es but still did not make it to the main draw of the J30 McK­in­ney in the Unit­ed States.

Mere days af­ter clinch­ing both the boys’ un­der-18 sin­gles and dou­bles ti­tles at the J60 ITF (In­ter­na­tion­al Ten­nis Fed­er­a­tion) Ju­nior Tour­na­ment at the Na­tion­al Rac­quet Cen­tre in Tacarigua, Dal­la Cos­ta made the trek to the Unit­ed States on Sat­ur­day night for his first match on Mon­day.

On a dri­ve to re­ceive much-need­ed ex­pe­ri­ence ahead of his tran­si­tion to se­niors soon, Dal­la Cos­ta con­test­ed Group F of the round-robin play­off, need­ing to win the group to progress to the main draw. How­ev­er, for­tune was not on his side, and he was swept aside by home­town favourite Se­bas­t­ian Zavala in straight sets 6-0, 6-0.

It was the worst re­sult the 17-year-old had re­ceived for the week, hav­ing made up to ride a wave of con­fi­dence af­ter his tri­umph in T&T. A day lat­er, how­ev­er, Dal­la Cos­ta ap­peared to have caught his length by de­feat­ing an­oth­er US-based play­er, Agastya Singh.

The tal­ent­ed Dal­la Cos­ta first held off his coun­ter­part 7-5 for a first-set ad­van­tage and lat­er made sure with a 6-4 tri­umph.

Dal­la Cos­ta’s hope for a win­ning spot in the group de­pend­ed heav­i­ly on the re­sults of top seed Zavala, who, af­ter beat­ing him, de­liv­ered a sim­i­lar­ly con­vinc­ing dis­play to take care of Finnegan Keenan on Tues­day 6-3, 6-2. The Trinida­di­an se­cured his sec­ond vic­to­ry of the tour­na­ment by pre­vail­ing over Keenan 6-4 in the open­ing set yes­ter­day and had as­sumed a 3-0 ad­van­tage in the sec­ond set when Keenan re­tired hurt.

The vic­to­ry was on­ly good enough for the sec­ond-place fin­ish in the group, as Zavala topped the group with a vic­to­ry over Singh.

Dal­la Cos­ta will to­day pair with Amer­i­can Dy­lan Meineke for the dou­bles, which serve off to­day.