Alek Devidze returns a shot in the Boys 16-and-under singles final of the city tennis tournament on Friday at Columbus North High School.
James Pence | The Republic
Alek Devidze and Isa Pan are only going into the eighth grade, but that didn’t stop them from winning divisions above their age level at Friday’s City Junior Tennis Tournament.
Devidze won the Boys 16-and-under singles title, and Pan, his Central Middle School classmate, captured the Girls 16/18 title.
“I always play with the 16U people in the tennis clinics, so I decided I could do that,” Devidze said. “I’m going to be honest. I did not expect (to win) at all. Maybe next year, I can play with the 18s.”
Devidze lost only six games in his three matches, which were played in best-of-three sets to 4 in each of the first two sets, with a seven-point tiebreaker if necessary. Devidze beat incoming Columbus North junior Jace Branham 4-2, 4-1 in the final in a rematch of the 14U final from 2022.
“I found a strategy for all three matches, and I just kept going,” Devidze said. “I just stayed positive the whole time.”
Pan, meanwhile, had a little tougher time in the tournament’s lone girls division. She needed a third-set tiebreaker to win her semifinal match against Valeria Cortes before upsetting top-seeded Sophia Crabtree 5-4 (5-3), 5-3 in the final.
“This tournament was very hard to win,” Pan said. “We have a lot of good competent players, and everybody played very well.”
Crabtree, who will be an eighth-grader at Hauser, had beaten Pan in a tournament last week.
“I went more attacking, I hit harder shots and I got more spin on my shots,” Pan said.
Meanwhile, Lucas Jiang won all three of his round-robin matches to take the Boys 12U division. Jiang, who will be a fourth-grader at Southside Elementary, won two of his matches in third-set tiebreakers, including an 11-9 tiebreaker against runner-up Ritvik Prithivi Raj.
“I think I played pretty good,” Jiang said. “I wasn’t double-faulting a lot. My serves were consistent, and I hit some pretty good shots.”
Niranjan Pillai won the Boys 16U B division. Pillai beat Hersch Patel 4-2, 1-4, (7-3) in the final.
In the Boys 14U division, Vidit Trivedi of Plain City, Ohio, beat Kai Bergman 4-2, 4-0 in the final.
