(By Steve Hopkins, photo MLTT)
USA’s Daniel Tran took top honors in the U19 Boys Singles event at the WTT Youth Contender Series event in San Francisco. Tran entered as the fourth seed, but eliminated the top seeded Lin Chin-Ting of Taipei before taking out Australia’s Chulong Nie 3-1 in the Final. Two other Americans won an early match with Tanish Pendse and Kef Noorani each reaching the Quarterfinals.
Japanese players were dominant in the U19 Girls with three Japanese players reaching the Semifinals. Rin Mende defeated India’s Syndrela Das in one Semi and Cocona Muramatsu defeated Hisa Uriu in the other. Rin Mende then topped Cocona Muramatsu 3-2 in an All-Japanese Final. USA’s Irene Yeoh was the only in the draw, the fell to the eventual winner in the Quarterfinals. The U19 Mixed Doubles champions were USA’s Bosman Botha and Japan’s Rin Mende.
In U17 Boys, Cheng Min-Hsiu of Taipei won the event, and took out three of America’s best along the way. Cheng defeated USA’s Jaden Jia in the Round of 16, topped USA’s Kyler Chen in the Quarterfinals, and then beat top seeded Kef Noorani in the Semifinals. Ultimately, the final was Cheng over Thailand’s Thitaphat Preechayan. The U17 Girls title went to Japan’s Aoba Takahashi who defeated Lee Dahye of the Republic of Korea. Irene Yeoh was the only American to win a match in the event, losing in the Quarterfinals to eventual winner Takahashi.
The U15 Boys title went to Thailand’s Thitaphat Preechayan over Taipei’s Wu Yuan-Kai. Four Americans in the event reached the Round of 16: Kyler Chen, Ethan Wang, Joshua Joseph, and Chirag Pradhan. The U15 Girls event was won by Lu Yu-En over Chen Chih Yen in an all-Taipei Final. USA’s Isabella Luo and Chiang Janelle finished in third. USA’s Anya Shanbhag had a nice first round win before falling to Finalist Chen in the Quarters. The Mixed Doubles U15 champions were Taipei’s Wu and Lu.
The U13 Boys Singles event went to Wu Yuan-Kai over Ong Zane with Loh Yi Xi and Kojima Ryuya finishing in third. USA’s Anya Shanbhag finished first in U13 Girls with Singapore’s See Chevelle in second, and a pair of Americans in third – Alice Chen and Shreya Venkateraman. The top four in U11 Boys Singles were USA’s Ali Afrakhteh in first, USA’s William Jin in second, and USA’s Aarudhran Aswin and Taipei’s Cheng Hao Chung in third. And in the U11 Girls event it was USA’s Shreya Srinivasan in first, Sie Cai Yin in second, and USA’s Shriya Kodaty and Qi Leah in third.
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