By Sean Devers
Brandon Bridgewater of Curacao defeated Guyana’s Nathan De Nobrega 7/6, 6/2 in the COTECC Trinity Cup U-14 final held at the National Racket Centre in Tacarigua, Trinidad on Thursday evening.

De Nobrega led 5/3 40-0 in the first set and seemed poised to take the set, but Brandon had other plans. He crawled his way back in the set with grit and consistency. With Nathan visibly exhausted and demonstrating some form of discomfort in his left leg, Brandon capitalised on that, along with the momentum from the first set to close out the match.

Nathan qualified for the final after defeating Trinidadian Nirav Dougdeen 6/4,6/3. DeNobrega broke his opponent’s service game early in the first set to go up 2/0, but lost his service game immediately after. They traded breaks throughout that set until Nathan finally held his nerves and closed it out 6/4.

Nirav started strong by breaking Nathan’s opening service game and again in the third game to move ahead 3/0, but the fight that Nathan has would not allow him to let that set just slip by. He settled and rallied to win six consecutive games to take the set and the match to qualify for last evening final.

Rebel’s Tennis Club head coach, Andre Erskine, spoke of the benefits of his young charges being involved in this tournament and looked ahead to his trip to Barbados.

“The players gained lots of experience over the last three weeks. The tournaments here were of a very high standard and attracted players from the USA, Australia Canada, Curacao, St. Lucia, Barbados, El Salvador, and Peru, among other countries.

As the U-14 players head to Barbados, we expect a greater fight and ultimately take home the winner’s trophy,” said Erskine.

The Barbados tournament is scheduled to commence today and the Guyanese contingent was booked to arrive in ‘Bim’ last Evening.