MANILA – A teenager from Mindanao won for himself a place in the country’s sports history when he became the first Filipino to bag a championship in the just-concluded Grand Slam in tennis at the Australian Open.
He is Francis Casey “Nino” Alcantara, dubbed as the county’s “wunderkind” in tennis, who paired with Chinese-Taipei’s Cheng Peng Hsieh to bag the Aussie Open junior boys doubles crown.
The tandem crushed their rivals, Mikail Biryukov of Russia and Yasutaka Uchimaya of Japan, 6-4 6-2,in the finals.
Because of his victory, the power-hitting Alcantara, who learned to play tennis at age 5 from his father, is now being considered for inclusion in the Philippine training team for the Davis Cup championships.
Alcantara, who turns 17 on February 4, achieved what no Filipino has done before. En route to the championship, he and his partner did not drop a single set and only twice did they have to play a tiebreak.
He also revealed the Australian Open title was the third championship he and Hsieh had earned, the first two being in China and Thailand.
The Filipino ace lost his father when he was only 10 seven years ago. He said it was a painful blow because it was his father who introduced him to tennis as they played the sport in a tennis court located just across the street from their home in Cagayan de Oro in Mindanao.
Alcantara’s father was only 37 years old when he succumbed to a heart attack. His mother,Sarah, took over as the family’s breadwinner by working as an employee at the Cagayan de Oro City office of the Social Security System, the state-run pension fund for private sector workers.
“I dedicate the victory to my dad who’s watching over me up there,” said Alcantara, a senior high school student at the Xavier University which is run by Jesuit priests in Cagayan de Oro.
He added: “I’m really proud to be a Filipino. I’m also dedicating the championship to all our countrymen.”
Filipino youngster Felix Barrientos reached the semifinals of the Wimbledon junior singles in 1985. That was also the year when he was ranked No. 1 in the world in the junior circuit.
In 1953 tennis great, the late Felicisimo Ampon won the Wimbledon Plate, a tournament for first and second-round losers in the Wimbledon men’s singles.
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