Nigeria’s Micheal Osewa caused the biggest upset so far at the 39th ITF/CAT Africa Junior Championship in Pretoria, South Africa by beating tournament’s number one seed, Younes Adnane, of Morocco 1-6, 6-3, 6-2 to qualify for the quarterfinal of the boy’s 14&under.
The sixth-seeded Osewa started the tournament on a losing note as he fell 6-4, 6-4 to Eliakin Coulibaly of Ivory Coast but bounced back to contention
with back-to-back wins over Salum Mutabazi of Burundi and Codie Van Schalkwyk of Namibia to set up a last-16 clash with Adnane.
The game at the University of Pretoria High Performance Centre, seemed to be heading the way of form book as the Moroccan took the first set in a convincing manner hitting series of winners for a 6-1 triumph. However, Osewa, a semi-finalist at the last edition in Tunisia, took the second set 6-3 forcing Adnane to lose his unblemished record as he had yet to drop a set before.
Osewa completed a memorable win in a 6-2 final set to set up a quarterfinal meeting with Jason Espitalien of Mauritius.
Team Nigeria had on Sunday recorded seven wins out of the nine matches they featured but Monday was not all rosy as Gabriel Friday was knocked out by South Africa’s Kholowalm Montsi 6-4, 6-4. It was the same fate for Christopher Bulus and Barakat Quadri who both lost their round of 16 matches.
Friday was adjudged as one of the standout performers of the tournament winning all his preliminary matches – the most memorable of which was against Morocco’s Assil Boussairy – in straight sets but had his run halted by the homeboy.
Christopher Itodo also exited the boy’s 16&under on Monday as he lost 6-0, 6-0 to Philip Henning of South Africa to join Adetayo Adetunji, Angel McLeod and Marylove Edward who all failed to progress from the preliminaries.
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