KUCHING: Sixth seed South Korea upset the odds by defeating first seed Australia 2-0 to progress to the final of the ITF World Tennis Junior Team Competition U14 (Girls) Asia/Oceania Final Qualifying at the Sarawak Lawn Tennis Association (SLTA) Centre on Friday.
In the highly anticipated semi-final tie, the first singles match of the semi-final started with Hong Ye-Ri of South Korea against Koharu Nishikawa of Australia and it proved to be a closely contested affair.
Hong eventually emerged victorious after a gruelling 2 hours and 35 minutes, winning 0-6, 6-4, 6-4.
In the second singles match, Choo Ye-Sung defeated Renee Alame of Australia 6-2, 7-5 after 1 hour and 45 minutes to secure the win for South Korea.
In the other semi-final, fourth seed Japan faced off against fifth seed Kazakhstan where Miku Kitaoka of Japan won the first singles’ match against Eva Korysheva of Kazakhstan after a marathon 3-hour and 14-minute battle, with the final score being 6-2, 5-7, 7-6(4).
In the second singles match, Hikari Yamamoto of Japan defeated Yerkezhan Zhanatayeva of Kazakhstan 6-2, 6-1 after 1 hour and 15 minutes to secure Japan’s place in the final.
South Korea and Japan have now qualified for the grand finals which will take place in August in the Czech Republic.
The two teams will also face each other in the final of the qualifiers on Saturday with Australia taking on Kazakhstan for the third and final spot for the grand finals in the 3rd/4th place playoff on Saturday.
Meanwhile, in the 5th to 8th playoff, second seed India won against third seed Thailand 2-0, while seventh seed Hong Kong defeated eighth seed Uzbekistan 2-1.
India will face Hong Kong for 5th/6th place, while Thailand will face Uzbekistan for 7th/8th place on Saturday.
