Two international junior tournaments hosted by Tennis Cambodia drew to a close at the National Tennis Centre in Phnom Penh on Saturday.

This year marked the Kingdom’s fourth year hosting the ITF Junior Circuit events and the 2019 tournaments featured the highest number of Cambodian juniors ever to participate, with 19 in total.

Tennis Cambodia began hosting the events in 2016 aiming to enable the Kingdom’s juniors to receive high quality competition without having travel outside the country.

With a new main sponsor for this year’s editions, the competition, which began on February 16, is now named the ABA Bank ITF Junior 2019 Series. ABA Bank will partner with Tennis Cambodia for all four tournaments in 2019.

Kai Shiang Yang from Chinese Taipei defeated South Korea’s Woobin Shin in the boys final on Saturday in a three-set thriller.

It was only fitting that the final went to three sets and all the way to the third set tiebreaker, where Yang overcame losing the first set to claim the title 1-6, 6-3, 7-6(2).

On the girls side, Thailand’s Lanlana Tararudee won her second consecutive title, having also clinched the first week’s event. The 15-year-old defeated 13-year-old Korean Eujin Kim 6-0, 6-2 in dominating fashion.

Igor Zimarev and Vannak Lach, respectively ABA Bank’s head of marketing and public relations supervisor, joined to watch the finals of the second week’s competition and to hand over the trophies to the finalists and champions – but only after witnessing a spectacular display of tennis by all the players who made it to the final day.

Over 100 players competed each week. The next ABA Bank ITF Junior 2019 Series event will take place in Phnom Penh in November and December.

Basil Riley