Cesar Q. Quilenderino and Ben Micu JEDDAH — Team Blue made a magnificent recovery to turn the tables on Team Green in the SPTC HeatWave Tennis Challenge being held at the King Abdulaziz University sports complex here. Team Green had Team Blue pinned against the wall by sweeping to a 2-0 lead after the first two doubles, and needed just one more win from the next 3 sets for an outright victory. But things turned around in the next two doubles matches as the Blue Team cut Team Green's comfortable lead into naught in the third and fourth sets setting back the teams match-up back to square one at 2-sets all. At the start of the third set Team Blue's Rik Maulion and Zaldy Gabriel took up the heat of the Team Green's pressing lead, overhauling its deficit with countering baseline drives by Zaldy and high-looping shots by Rik, which helped break the service game of Hajji Pilongo. Then they held serves for a huge 3-0 headway past Jun Tomas and Hajji Pilongo of Team Green. Jun Tomas held his serve in the fourth game to make it 1-3, and Hajji Pilongo did the same in the sixth game. Jun repeated it in the eighth game to scale down the difference to 3-5. But Team Blue's Rik Maulion and Zaldy Gabriel refused to let go their lead and upped the tempo stretching their lead to 4-1 and 5-2 by winning their service games. They then broke Hajji's serve in the 10th game to open up 7-3 breakaway lead that was trimmed to 8-5 at the end for Blue team's win. In the fourth set, still a close defeat dangling over their heads, Team Blue's Gary Bautro and Ariel Domingo had to work hard getting out of an early 0-2 deficit after losing the first two games against Team Green's Clark Maldo and Mashur Jamiri —Mashur held service game and Ariel's serve was broken. Gary Bautro and Ariel Domingo, in turn, broke the service game of Team Green's Clark Maldo. Gary then held his serve in the fourth to level the game at 2-2. But Mashur Jamiri held his service game again in the fifth to regain the lead at 3-2 for Team Green. An exchange of passing shots between the pairs ensued in the next six games that tilted the advantage to Team Blue's Bautro and Domingo which ultimately helped them keep the Green pair stuck to the score of 3 and to close out the match at 8-3. In another match, Team Green's top doubles pair of Romy Sorry and Norwin Catipay thumped their counterparts Fred Masangkay and CQ Quilenderino of Team Blue, who failed to recover from their 1-3 deficit in the early part of the game. Sorra and Catipay choked their opponents by holding serves throughout the match and allowed only 3 service games of their opponents for a big 8-3 win for Team Green. Roy Timtiman teamed up with Neph Rosco for Team Green and stormed to win by taking an insurmountable 6-1 lead with only one game slipping out of their control after a hold-serve by Team Blue's Rolly Saldana in the opening game. In the following eighth and ninth games, Mike Amerol and Saldana notched two successive game points for Team Blue to cut their deficit to 3-6. But Rosco and Timtiman had plenty from their variety of shots to end the match at the 12th game for an 8-4 win for Team Green. The deciding fifth set singles match between Gilbert Gochuico Team Blue and Team Green's Ben Hasim Salabin is scheduled to be played later in the week. This tennis tournament is organized and managed by SPTC and supported by Ben Micu (Tournament Director), Roy Timtiman (vice chairman for internal affairs) and Lito Bentulan (vice chairman for external affairs). The technical Committee is composed of Jun Tomas, Oca Lovitos and Vic Rebong.
