TOP Filipino junior campaigners Khim Iglupas and John Bryan Otico brushed off their respective rivals yesterday to barge into the boys’ and girls’ singles quarterfinals of the PSC-Phinma International Juniors Tennis Championships Week 2 at Rizal Memorial Tennis Center.
Iglupas, who won the twin tournament’s Week 1, downed Japanese Sakura Yonehara, 6-4, 6-7 (7-3), 6-2, to keep her bid for a singles sweep alive in the ITF Grade 4 event sponsored by Phinma Group of Companies and the Philippine Sports Commission.
The 17-year-old stalwart of the Philippine Tennis Academy overcame the jolt of dropping the second set to the hard-fighting Yonehara by breaking her Japanese foe’s serve early in the deciding set and then coasting to victory.
Otico thumped David Marshall Nguyen of the United States, 6-2, 7-5, and will next take on Indonesia’s Muhammad Althaf Dhaifullah, who ousted Arthur Pantino, 2-6, 6-1, 6-4.
Like Iglupas—who set up a clash with either Ayumi Hirata or Ayana Rengii of Japan—Otico and Pantino are scholars of PTA, a group founded by tennis patrons Rommie Chan, Oscar Hilado and Jean Henri Lhuillier.
But two other Filipinos—Shaira Hope Rivera and Maia Balce—were eliminated. Rivera bowed to Wang Xinyu of China, 6-2, 6-2, while Balce lost to Himari Sato, 6-4, 6-2.
Top seed Ayumi Miyamoto dumped compatriot Risa Fukutoku, 6-0, 6-2, to set up a quartefinal clash with Sato.