Team Dalla Costa/Moravec goes medal-less

There was no ti­tle for T&T’s Kale Dal­la Cos­ta or his part­ner, Nico­las Moravec of the Czech Re­pub­lic, Sat­urday (April 11).

Both con­test­ed the boys’ un­der-18 dou­bles on the fi­nal day of the In­ter­na­tion­al Ten­nis Fed­er­a­tion’s (ITF) World Ten­nis Tour Ju­niors J60 Trin­i­ty Cup at the Na­tion­al Rac­quet Cen­tre in Or­ange Grove, Tacarigua, but went down in straight sets in the hot­ly con­test­ed fi­nal to the pair of Yared Al­fred of the Unit­ed States Vir­gin Is­lands (USVI) and Nico­las Pe­draza of the Unit­ed States.

Fol­low­ing an iden­ti­cal 6-3, 6-3 tri­umph over the two­some of Em­ryk Crete and Xza­vier Ha­stick of Cana­da in the semi­fi­nals, the stage ap­peared to have been set for a ti­tle-win­ning per­for­mance in yes­ter­day’s fi­nal, which served off at 1 pm. How­ev­er, the Crete/Ha­stick com­bi­na­tion proved to be un­pre­dictable on the day and jumped ahead 6-3 in the open­ing.

Still, with home­town favourite Dal­la Cos­ta play­ing good ten­nis, there was hope of a come­back in the sec­ond set. For­tune, though, did not fol­low the team of Dal­la Cos­ta and Moravec, as the Cana­di­an pair made sure of the ti­tle with a 6-4 tri­umph in the sec­ond-set-de­cider.

Ear­li­er, Sat­ur­day, the Czech found out what a hor­ri­ble day on the court could look like, as he was al­so beat­en in the sin­gles fi­nal.

On Fri­day (April 10), Moravec ap­peared to have had the per­fect birth­day cel­e­bra­tion when he de­feat­ed US-born T&T play­er David Beck­les 6-0, 6-2 in the semi­fi­nals for the right to take on Pe­draza in the fi­nal af­ter the lat­ter took care of Ha­stick 6-4, 6-3. But like in the dou­bles, Pe­draza proved too strong in the ti­tle match, ek­ing out a 6-4 tri­umph to take the ad­van­tage af­ter the first set.

And lat­er, there was no stop­ping Pe­draza in the sec­ond set, as he whipped Moravec 7-5 to lift the crown.