Coquitlam Tennis Club Junior Program 2016: New Challenger Wins Under 18 Title

CTC Junior Club Closed – U18 | With the departure of two time club champion Ilya Tihanenoks, a new champion was crowned. Basically it came down to the four juniors who could win this under 18 club title: William Baumann, Alexander Baumann, Ken Zhang and Ray Wang. The favourite was between the two Baumann brothers, William and Alexander. Despite being the highest ranking boy at our club, Alexander has lost both times he played against his older brother this year. The first was in the final of the Coquitlam Junior Spring Challenger in May and the second was in the round-robin portion of this club closed tournament. William has also beaten Ray Wang in the May tournament. Ken Zhang was also beaten by William at the recent tournament road trip to Whistler. Alexander has beaten Zhang in straight sets in a friendly match recently. Although Alexander did not match up against Wang this year, these two juniors last met a year ago at the club closed tournament. Alexander won in three sets in the round-robin stage.

So what happened? The semi-finals pitted the elder Baumann against Wang, and the younger Baumann against Zhang. Well both semi-finals results were very close indeed. Alexander had experienced localized pain on his left arm from the tetanus booster shot he had received less than 24 hours before. It was painful enough to prevent him from hitting adequate backhand shots. Zhang was quick to realize this and seized the opportunity to target his opponent's backhand. Zhang took the first set 6-3. Baumann hang in tough and dug in deeper to take the second set 6-4. Both players battled it out for victory in the super-tiebreaker as the third set. A service break early on in the tie-breaker set had Baumann taken a slight lead, but it disappeared in the middle of the set. From then on the scores swung back and forth between them. The match finally ended with the score of 6-3, 4-6, 11-9 and a victory for Zhang.

The other semi-finals match was just as closed as the first. William Baumann was looking for a relatively easy match since he had demolished Wang 6-2, 6-0 four months ago. Wang put on a strong showing which caught Baumann off guard. Wang played hard and gained confidence as the match progressed. Despite winning the first set tie-breaker at 7-4, Baumann had to fight hard to stay ahead in the match. The second set score see-sawed all the way to the tie-breaker. Faced with a possible straight sets defeat yet again, Wang made his move and levelled the match with another 7-4 tie-breaker score. In the super-tiebreaker as the third set, Baumann decided this was too close for comfort and took charge of the points and finally claimed this victory over Wang. The score was 7-6, 6-7, 10

If the two semi-finals were interesting enough, the final was even more so. William Baumann was confident he could have this match against Zhang in his back pocket for the second time in as many weeks. Zhang wanted nothing of that nonsense. He wanted to ride his lucky streak and seized the opportunity to claim the title. Tension started to mount before the match began. There were too many close line calls from both ends. Both of these players are going too much for the lines. Service breaks were exchanged. Zhang won out on service breaks and took the first set 6-3. Many serves were broken again between the two players in the second set. Baumann managed to hold one more of his serve late in the set, which was good enough for him to claim the second set at 7-5. The third set basically boiled down to who was going to hold serves more. Both players mounted offensive attack throughout the third full set, but in the end it was Baumann who managed to hold his service game only once early in the set. That was good enough for Zhang to become our new club champion. Alexander finished third with a 6-2, 6-0 victory over Wang. Wang was not in a position to play his best as he had just recovered from flu.