In a rather interesting twist of fate, Christian Paul, who became a Main Draw player due to the non availability of Alejandro Davidovich Fokina, the tournament’s number four seed, is the only Nigerian player left in the Governor’s Cup Lagos Tennis Championship.
Nigerian Tennis Live findings showed that Paul emerged as the best of all the losers when there was need to replace the Spaniard, and coincidentally, had to play against Nigerian starlet, Christopher Itodo, whom he defeated in two straight and easy sets of 6-1, 6-0.
And as fate would have it, Paul partnered fellow Nigerian, Iloputa Ikechukwu to defeat the Nigerian pair of Stephen Augustine and Ayoola Michael in two straight sets of 6-3, 6-0, to progress to the quarter final stage of the doubles event.
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| Christian Paul was a lucky loser and is now in the second leg of the Main Draw. |
Thus, the one time gold medalist at the National Sports Festival, is the only Nigerian left in the pro-circuit and will compete in the second round when hostilities continue on Wednesday, 11 October.
With this result, the local star will have to pull all his resources together and be at his very best when he comes up against India’s Aryan Goveas, who was responsible for the scalp of Henry Atseye, the same opponent he lost to in the qualifying series.
In other matches, Henry Atseye, Thomas Otu, Sarah Adegoke, Adetayo Adetunji, Christopher Bulus all lost in the first round as a host of Nigerian players in the tournament could not make it to the second stage of the competition.
Nigerian players will need to step up their games ahead of the Futures 5 whose qualifying series commences on Saturday, 14 October, after the finals of the first leg of the ITF-rated pro circuit serving west and central African.