Nigeria’s Oyinlomo Quadri, Wednesday, became a ‘talk of the town’ in faraway Tunis, Tunisia after putting up an amazing performance in her 7-5, 6-3 defeat of home girl, Auertin Sarra, thereby landing herself a quarterfinal berth at the ITF/CAT African Junior Championship 16 & under.
Reports made available to Nigerian Tennis Live had it that the 14-year-old Nigerian was puzzled by Sarra’s aggressive style which saw the Tunisian number eight seed race to a 5-0 lead in the opening set.
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| Oyinlomo Quadri keeps turning heads in Tunisia with her outstanding performances. |
But the Nigerian star player rose to the occasion and stunned the large home crowd – who showed tremendous support for their compatriot – by winning seven straight games as she compounded the woes of the home fans who were praying so hard to not witness a repeat of what happened on Tuesday.
The home fans were not going to see a repeat of Matthew Abamu’s elimination of their homeboy, Elyes Ben Abdullah in the boy’s category, and were beginning to pump in more support for their player.
The second set began in an identical fashion as Sarra led 2-0 but would not be allowed to build on that as the unbelievable Oyin turned the table once more to lead 4-2 before seeing out the match with a 6-3 second set triumph.
“She played percentage tennis today; she is the talk of the tournament as everyone could not believe the way she kept her composure to win the match especially during the first set when everyone thought it was sealed for the Tunisian girl,” Nigeria’s junior tennis coach, Mohammed Ubale said.
Abamu, who did the impossible on Tuesday could not match the top quality of top seed and title favourite Eliakim Coulibaly of Cote d’Ivoire, who almost expectedly cruised to an easy 6-0, 6-1 win.
Over 50 players from 18 countries are featuring in the week-long clay-court tournament which will see the top players featuring in European Tour as well as bagging ITF training scholarships as reward for their impressive displays.