Alcantara last Pinoy standing in Mitsubishi tennis

MANILA, Philippines – Local top bet Francis Casey Alcantara treated his hometown fans to a 6-3, 6-2 win over Great Britain’s Matthew Thomson in the second round of the 20th Mitsubishi Lancer International Juniors Tennis Championships a the Rizal Memorial Tennis Center. It was a fitting welcome for the 17-year old netter, whose opening game was attended by a huge crowd that came out to support him. The second-seeded Alcantara, who is ranked 17th in the International Tennis Federation rankings, is the Philippines’ bright spot to end its poor performance of the host country in the boys division. No Filipino netter has won a title since the tournament started in 1990. Alcantara nearly ended that title drought when he barged into last year’s semifinals. “I’m very happy because the crowd was there to support me. I just hope they will be there until the end of this tournament," said Alcantara, a doubles winner in the Australian Juniors Open along with Chinese Taipei’s Hsieh Cheng-Peng. Alcantara, who returned at the same venue where he won the Phinma Juniors Championships title last November, showed poise and confidence against the 158th ranked Thomson, who reached the next round after a 6-2, 7-5 win over Filipino wild card bet Leander Lazaro. Thomson failed to match his opponent’s intensity in the entire match as Alcantara displayed good serve and consistency with his ground strokes to win over the British netter in just 70 minutes. “I’m playing with better confidence since I’m ranked number two in this event. I can feel the pressure because there are a lot of expectations on me but I can handle it and I will do my best to win this tournament," added the Cagayan de Oro native. His next game will be against 15th seed Matteo Civarolo of Italy who posted a 2-6, 6-2, 7-5 decision against Jeroen Claeys of Belguim. “I’ve not played with him but I’ll be ready," added Alcantara who is the only Filipino left standing in the weeklong tournament. Jeson Patrombon – who last Tuesday prevented a shutout for the hosts with a 6-3, 6-7(5), 7-6(5) win over Ivan Turudic of Croatia – bowed to 11th seed Ben McLachlan of New Zealand. The three-hour long first round match took its toll on the 15-year old Patrombon as he played with a bruised left thigh muscle. He called for a medical timeout in the second set with McLachlan in the lead, 3-2, to somehow ease the pain. Patrombon held serve to tie the count but McLachlan won the next to games to move to 5-3. Patrombon broke McLachlan but failed to hold serve because of his thigh injury to formally bow out of contention. Top seed Huang Liang-Chi won over Pavel Krainik of Canada, 7-5, 6-1, to lead the seeded players who advanced into the next round. Other seeded players that entered the next round were Daniel Berta (No.6), Korean Suk-Young Jeong (No.8), John Morrissey of Ireland (No.10) and India’s Kaza Vinayak Sharma (No.16). Seeded players who fell were shown the exit door are Emanuele Molina (No.4) and Alessandro Bega (No.9) of Italy and 13th seed David Thomson of Great Britain. – GMANews.TV