Taiwan’s Yang Tsung-hua has his mind set on making the qualifying draw of this year’s US Open and he took a step in the right direction yesterday when he won the first men’s professional tennis tournament held in Taiwan since late 2007.
The 20-year-old topped an out-of-sorts Junn Mitsuhashi 6-0, 6-3 in the final of the US$15,000 Futures tournament being played in Tienmu, Taipei, to win the first prize of US$1,950 and 27 ranking points.
“The money isn’t that significant. It can cover some travel expenses, but that’s about it,” Yang, the world No. 327, said after the match. “The points help a lot though because they’ll move me up in the rankings.”
Photo: Yeh Shih-hung, Taipei Times
Winning the Futures event should propel Yang back into the top 300, closer to where he feels he needs to be — in the top 250 — to have a reasonable shot at playing in the qualifying tournament for the US Open, the final Grand Slam tournament of the year.
This past week, he had a rare opportunity to play at home as the top seed in the tournament and he lived up to his billing, getting better as the tournament went on and the heat was not quite as oppressive.
Yesterday, he got some help from Mitsuhashi, who looked like he had just rolled out of bed in the first three games, committing repeated unforced errors.
After a long rain delay at that point, the Japanese world No. 521 seemed to settle down and had two break points to narrow Yang’s lead to 3-1, but Yang pulled off two service winners and then served out the game.
Mitsuhashi all but conceded the final two games of the first set to save his energy for the second.
He opened by holding his serve and had numerous break points against Yang in the set’s second game, but the young Taiwanese again used some clutch serving to stave off the threat and gain a mental edge over his opponent.
“I really made sure to concentrate at the start of the second set. I’ve had a lot of matches where I got an early lead or won the first set, but then relaxed and let my opponent back into the match,” Yang said. “Holding my serve in the second game of the second set was the key point in the match.”
The Japanese had spent much of the match commiserating with himself over his many missed shots and when Yang broke him in the fifth game of the second set, the self-berating picked up a notch and Mitsuhashi rarely threatened again.
Yang hopes to repeat his success this coming week in another Futures event in Tienmu and he will then travel to China and Uzbekistan for Challenger events, which are one level up from Futures, in search of more ranking points.
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