By Cesar Q. Quilenderino

JEDDAH — Team D steamrolled Team B in 3 of the 5 match-ups that were finished last Friday in the SPTC Tennis Jamboree at the King Abdulaziz University Sports Complex here. Team D has already taken the top spot from the erstwhile leader Team A with 2 more games yet to be played.

A front force of 3 doubles, paved the way for the initial three-set victory for Team D as the pair of Mencol Eman and Ali Madj fashioned out a hard-earned 8-7 victory against Team B’s Mashur Jamiri and Fernan Fermin in the first set after scraping a tie-breaker in Category C/C. The Team D tandem won serves in the second and fourth games with break-serve in between to open up a 3-1 lead early in the game. Then, the rival doubles chalked up one-game win each to thrust both to 5-2 scores. The Team B pair stormed back through games 3 to 6, regaining the lead at 6-5 with a break-serve against Team D’s Mencol Eman in the 11th on a sudden-death deuce game.

But, Ali Madj bucked the odds with his own nerves of steel under pressure game during the next sudden-death deuce game in the 12th, winning his second service game in the match that gave way to the reverse point for their impending first set victory. The unlikely hero and neophyte Category C player forced his serve to tie the game 6-6, then backed up Mencol Eman with baseline defensive shots to break serve against Team B’s Mashur Jamiri. Team B’s Fernan Fermin and Mashur Jamiri broke Mencol Eman’s serve in the 14th game via a clean 40-love sweep to force a tiebreaker game, but Team D’s Ali Madj and Mencol Eman capped their decisive run of big shots in the extension game nailing down a 7-5 finish and won the first set at 8-7.

Julius Garcia and Rauf Butt of Team D came out with their best performance in the Category B2+/B2 competition against Team B’s Leo Maranion and Mark Banaag. Falling behind 0-3 after the first 3 games, he Team D tandem put found rhythm in the fourth frame up to the last with the combination of consistent baseline shots of Rauf Butt and the timely net-attacking game of Julius Garcia and produced resounding result, winning the second set 8-4. They trailed at 2-4, but cruised through the following games to finish the set for Team D. Rauf Butt won all of his three service games throughout the match, while the other three contending players won serve only once each.

In Category Legend, Team D’s Pol Fernandez and CQuilenderino blunted the challenge of Jun Tomas and Ariel Domingo of Team B early in their match to lead 2-0 but the Team B doubles sustained their heads-up to nose out and reversed their opponents twice, at 4-3 and then at 5-4 with the elusive high-looping shots of Jun Tomas in support of the occasional net-attacking shots of Ariel Domingo.

The Team D pair came up with their big shots in the 10th game to forge a 5-all situation, then continued with a hold-serve by Pol Fernandez in the 11th and break-serve against Jun Tomas in the following game to pad their lead at 7-5. The Team B tandem refused to be ditched yet and took control of the 13th game to break serve love-40 and stayed close against their component at 6-7. But, Team B’s Ariel Domingo lost his serve in the 14th and last game of the match — and their third losing sudden-death deuce encounters — for 8-6 final scores for Team D.

In a re-scheduled match under B1/B2+ Category, Team D’s Memed Darkum and Moi Noto breezed through with a spurt of two 4-game leads against Team C’s Norwin Catipay and Celso Abella — one jumpstarting to a 4-1 lead, then another one closing out their match with another string of 4 winning games against 1 for their opponents to finalize the game 8-2 for Team D.

Team D now tops the team standing with a total 83 points and 2 games more to play. Behind, and second from the top is Team A with 64 points total plus 4 games on schedule.

This team tennis tournament is organized and managed by the Samahang Pinoy Tennis Club (SPTC) of Jeddah with support of TFC, a TV channel named True Filipino Channel that gave away sport T-shirts for the tournament players, club members, as well as the guests and visitors.