The Philippine Online Chronicles

Just as he did at the Australian Open, Francis Casey Alcantara bounced back from a singles shutout by copping another prestigious doubles crown and rewriting Filipino tennis history all over again. 

The 17-year-old Filipino tennis prodigy wrapped up his stint at the recently-concluded 20^th Mitsubishi Lancer International Tennis Championships as the first hometown boy to reach the finals and bag a title at the event. Alcantara won the doubles championship with Swedish partner Daniel Berta by defeating brothers Ben and Riki McLachlan of New Zealand 6-3, 6-0 in the finals last Saturday at the Rizal Memorial Tennis Center.

The victory washed out the bitter aftertaste of Alcantara's third-round exit in the singles' tourney, where he was sent packing by Italian Matteo Civarolo 6-2, 3-6, 5-7. The second-seeded Alcantara had held a 3-2 lead in the deciding set, but was overmastered after being stricken with cramps.

“Masaya. Masarap ang feeling to be the first Filipino boy to win (I am happy. It feels good to be the first Filipino boy to win),” the doubles specialist was quoted as saying abs-cbnnews.com.

“I really had hoped to win this title after what happened in the singles,” he was further quoted as saying by gmanews.tv. “Luckily, me and Berta know each other's style well and didn't have the problem adjusting to one another.”

With their victory, the Filipino-Swedish pairing provided an encore to their successful run at the 13^th Sarawak Chief Minister's Cup International Tennis Federation (ITF) World Junior Championships in Malaysia, where they also won the boys' doubles championship two weeks ago.

The Sarawak title was Alcantara's second doubles trophy of the year following his historic victory at the Australian Open with Taiwan's Hsieh Cheng-Peng in January. All in all, Alcantara has collected three doubles trophies in 2009 and will soon be seeking his fourth at the Japan Junior Open Championships scheduled from March 31 to April 5. There, he will be paired up again with his Taiwanese partner.

“We'll be playing together again with high hopes of duplicating our feat in the Australian Open,” Alcantara was quoted as saying by manilatimes.net.

In turn, Berta also notched a memorable tournament of his own, as he became the first Swede to top the Mitsubishi Lancer contest by beating Riki McLachlan 6-3, 6-4.

The tournament's other winners were: Russian Polina Leykina, who topped the girls' singles event by trouncing compatriot Ekaterina Nikina 6-2, 6-4, and the duo of Taiwanese Ting-Fei Juan and Chinese Min Lu who beat Indonesian Beatrice Gumulya and Thai Kanyapat Narattana 6-7, 6-2, 10-8 for the girls' doubles title.

Photo: “Mixed Doubles” by Paul Denton Cocker taken from Fickr.com. Licensed under Creative Commons License BY-NC-ND 2.0.