CAGAYAN de Oro’s Francis Casey Alcantara and his Dutch partner Sam Verbeek made it to the finals of the F1 Singapore Future men’s doubles tennis tournament.
This, after the third-seeded duo of Alcantara and Verbeek defeated the Japanese pair of Issei Okamura and Arata Onozawa, 6-3, 6-4 on Saturday.
Okamura and Onozawa made it to the semifinals after an upset win over the top-seed tandem of Nam Hoang Ly of Vietnam and Vijay Sundar Prashanth of India, 4-6, 6-4 [12-10] in quarterfinals.
“We’re just lucky to have played our best against Okamura and Onozawa kay sila ang ni-eliminate sa top-seed,” Alcantara told this writer via text messaging.
Alcantara, 25 and Verbeek, 23 were still playing, as of press time, with another Japanese rivals Nagao and Oku in the final.
It was actually in the quarterfinals that Alcantara and Verbeek were seriously threatened by Hiroyasu Ehara and Sho Katayama of Japan.
After winning the opener, 6-3, Alcantara and his buddy from The Netherlands got humbled in the second set, 7-5.
They managed, however, to adjust in closing out the deciding third set, 10-3.
