JEDDAH: In the ongoing SPTC HeatWave Tennis Challenge, Team Blue lost the first doubles match against Team Green and again the second, but the last two doubles in the 3rd and 4th sets bailed it out from the brink as it came through to level their match at 2-sets-all during last Friday’s matches at the King Abdulaziz University sports complex here.

In the first set, Team Green’s top doubles Romy Sorry-Norwin Catipay notched their 2nd win in as many matches by thumping their Fred Masangkay-CQ Quilenderino of Team Blue, who get along sluggishly with 1-3 deficit in the early part of the game, and got stuck at 1-5, then failed to recover from a 3-7 hole. Sorry-Catipay held serve throughout the match and allowed only 3 service games of their opponents to chalk up 8-3 win for Team Green in the 1st set.

Neph Rosco and Toy Timtiman followed thru Team Green’s first-set victory by storming to an overwhelming 6-1 count, allowing only one game on hold-serves for their opponent in the opening game of their match against Mike Amerol and Rolly Saldana of Team Blue. Mike and Rolly rattled in 2 successive game points in the 8th and 9th to cut the deficit to 3-6, and kept on struggling at 4-7. But Team Green had plenty of air to unwind in Roy’s service game at the 13th frame, hammering out a 40-15 game point finish and an 8-4 win for the match.

The 3rd doubles pair of Team Blue, Rik Maulion-Zaldy Gabriel, took up the rescue job for their team against Team Green by jumpstarting to a 3-0 lead in the 3rd set match against Jun Tomas-Hajji Pilongo of Team Green, breaking the serves of Hajji in the 2nd game. Jun Tomas held his service game in the 4th frame to keep his pair’s deficit at striking distance of 1-3, but the Blue pair refused to lose grip of their 2-game advantage by thrusting their lead to 4-1 and 5-2 by winning their service games even as Team Green’s Hajji Pilongo and Jun Tomas held their own catch-up serves in the 6th and 8th for 2-4 and 3-5 deficits.

Team Green’s Hajji Pilongo lost serves in the 10th game, paving the way for their opponent to pull away at 7-3, but Team Blue’s Rik Maulion lost his serve, in turn, to allow back the score difference at 7-4. A determined Jun Tomas of Team Green took control of his service game to trim his pair’s deficit to 5-7. But on the 13th game, the speedy Zaldy Gabriel of Team Blue hang on with his service game that went under the tournament rules of a sudden-death climax, which ended the match in an exciting 8-5 finish.

Gary Bautro and Ariel Domingo had a shaky start for Team Blue as they went down 2 games in succession at the hands of Team Green’s Clark Maldo and Mashur Jamiri, with Mashur successful hold-serves and break-serves against Ariel. From 0-2, Team Blue’s Gary Bautro-Ariel Domingo leveled the games at 2-2 by breaking the serves of Team Green’s Clark Maldo and Gary’s hold-serves in the 4th game. Mashur Jamiri held his service games again in the 5th game to regain the lead at 3-2. But that was all the Team Green’s pair could do, as they were defenseless against the barrage of low-skimming passing shots from Gary Bautro and aggravated by the high-passing baseline shots by Ariel Domingo. The Blue doubles took control of the next 6 games and literally declared it their own to finish the match at 8-3.

This tennis tournament is organized by SPTC, with Ben Micu as tournament director and the other officers of the club, being led in acting capacity, Roy Timtiman (club vice-chairman for Internal Affairs) and Lito Bentulan (club Vice-chairman for External Affairs).

The Technical Committee is composed of Jun Tomas, Oca Lovitos, and Vic Rebong.