Tearney Scores Good Win In Futures Tournament

Gale-force winds weren’t able to stop the progress of Wellington 18-year-old Finn Tearney who had a first round win at the US$15,000 ASB Pro Circuit tennis Futures at North Harbour beating his Australian rival, 763rd ranked Matt Reid in straight sets 6-3 6-4.

Tearney ranked at 1323 gains another ranking point for his victory and will now face second seed Adam Feeney(Australia)who has a current ranking of 380 but has been as high as 248 in singles and 100 in doubles.

And while Tearney showed plenty of maturity for his win, there was a lack of composure in the local clash between Davis Cup team members Dan King-Turner and Adam Thompson.

The lengthy contest had King-Turner eventually winning 7-5 in the third set but only after the traditional testy environment which occurs whenever New Zealand players clash.

Kiwi No1 Rubin Statham trailed for a while against Marcus Daniell but eventually won 7-6(3) 6-1 while GD Jones didn’t handle the wind as well as his opponent, Russian fourth seed Artem Sitak. North Harbour’s Matt Simpson also fell in the first round.

Another promising New Zealand teenager, Logan MacKenzie who hails from Canterbury but is based in Australia showed his power as he took on third seeded Rameez Juniad(Australia). MacKenzie won the first set 7-5 after being down 4-5. However the experience of Juniad counted in the wind as he then reeled off the next two sets 6-2 6-0.

In the US$10,000 women’s singles draw Di Hollands struggled at first in her match against Australian Anna Wishink, but then cruised through the match 6-4 6-1 to set up a game against regular Hong Kong visitor Ling Zhang who is the fifth seed at 369th in the world.

In an all-Kiwi game Shona Lee easily won over Chelsea Te Tai but has a tougher task versus second seed I-Hsuan Hwang from Taipei who survived a three hour epic against Australian Daniela Scivetti.

In other matches the world No1 junior girl, Noppawan Lertcheewakarn from Thailand, the tournament fourth seed was dispatched in straight sets in the first round by Hong Kong qualifier Zi-Jun Yang ranked at 691, over 300 places lower than her opponent