JEDDAH, 29 March — Skab-1, under the sponsorship of Ace Travel, kept steady at the critical moments, took the big points in the telling breaks, then suddenly came out jumping with victory joy after KAIA’s last shot sent the ball out, clinching their first-ever championship title that came along with the coveted title in the Category C of the Malaysia Airlines Team Tennis Challenge, now on its final stage at the Albilad Hotel tennis courts here. Their final match against KAIA boiled down to the last fifth and last set - to the last two service games, supposed to be ñ after an exhausting and tense fourth set installed the two battling teams back to square one at 2-2 tie. This Skab-1 against KAIA final match turned out to be Erwin Pangan/Warren Tent versus Jhun Vidal/Rodel Santillan after all, and had all the trimmings of a championship match that an avid tennis player would look for.
The first service game in that fifth doubles set the tone for a neck-to-neck tussle of lobs and volley shots, as the ensuing games were tied six times from 1-1 to 6-6 and changed lead four times. Warren Tantengco of Skab-1 was made to work harder with his serves in the initial set to come out from a lung-busting six deuces that went 1-0 to his favor.
Ironically, Warren against KAIA’s Jhun had one thing in common — they held serves in ding-dong succession, but lost serves in the 9th and 10th games, again in succession. Further than that, Erwin, the tournament records officer cum Skab team captain, versus Rodel had their own parallel ways of losing serves, one after the other, throughout the match. But Erwin recovered his touch on time in the 12th game trading volleys and overhead shots that made up Skab’s telling points and broke the service game of Rodel to bring his team back in the thick of the fight from 5-6 down up to 6-all — and most of all to lead at 7-6. Then, the moment of truth came at the score of 6-7 with KAIA’s Jhun serving and beaming confidence that he could make use of his serves to bring the game into tiebreak. Reality took over as the normally reliable net player Rodel bungled two volleys in an attempt to ambush Skab’s passing shots close to his reach. From 0-30, Jhun made it 30-30 with the second point made from a well-placed flick down-the-line to the left side of Erwin who was moving in a reverse direction toward his right. Another sorry miss by Rodel from an easy overhead smash near the net brought the game at matchpoint 30-40. In the ensuing end game, Erwin and Warren worked out for the most important shot that gave their team the first-ever championship title — passing a lob that landed on mid-court at their opponents’ side.
KAIA’s Jhun took that shot in a cool hammering stance, pummeled the ball in moderate force that sent it floating too long off the baseline. Jubilation immediately flew high among the Skab players as well as their supporters who left their seats jumping with joy and swarmed their heroes right at the court and gave them victory hugs.
It could had been all over in favor of Skab in the 3rd set after they took the first two sets, but they found the KAIA team not that easy to give up and hard to crack. KAIA-C, whose most players are bound for Category B2 promotion, showed their mettle as a multititlist team when, in the 3rd set, their vaunted double of Ben Amaroto and Jess Ruivivar stopped the impending surge of first-time finalist Skab into the Category C throne. They rattled in successive points to break serves of Skab’s Gil Tingabngab and Robert Penpena, that sandwiched Ben’s service game, to jumpstart with 3-0 big lead. Robert got struck with a leg cramp and was visibly limping throughout his game, yet provided all the back up for the net-covering Gil and brought Skab creeping to 3-4 and 4-5 then hanging on to level the scores at 5-5 and 6-6 until the 7-7 deadlock — all in catch-up struggles. Jess and Ben took the tiebreaker, 8-6, to nip the Skab double from taking right away the Category C title.
Previously in the first set, Ganie Gasgonia, KAIA’s team captain, paired with Obet Vizcarra but went down 4-8 against a star B2-candidate Ruben Alzate of Skab who doubled with George Apolonio. KAIA’s setback built up 0 to 2 sets when their second double of Medel Cruz, another known B2-candidate who paired with Alex Sanchez, bowed 6-8 after failing to capitalize on his serve supposedly to bring the set into tiebreaker.
