Pan Am Championships: Calderano and Diaz win singles titles

(by Steve Hopkins, photo USATT)

Hugo Calderano defeated Kanak Jha in the men’s final and Adriana Diaz’s upset in the women’s final blocked a Brazilian singles victory as the action continued today at the ITTF Pan American Championships in Rock Hill, South Carolina.

Both the semi-finals and the final were played on Wednesday. In the men’s singles, top seed Hugo Calderano won three matches before Nicolas Burgos made his comeback. Ultimately, the final straw was an 11-5 victory in the sixth game, giving Calderano a 4-2 victory. American Kanak Jha dominated the other semi-final with a 4-0 victory over Argentina’s Horacio Cifuentes. The final was played a few hours later and it took Jha several games to match Calderano’s energy. Calderano easily won two games 11-6 and 11-6, before three tight games followed. Jha won the third game 11-9, Calderano won the fourth game 12-10, and Calderano closed the match with an 11-9 win in the fifth (a 4-1 victory).

The story of the women’s draw is the dominant performance of Puerto Rico’s Adriana Diaz. Diaz won all four of her matches 4-0. Diaz entered the event as the second seed behind Brazil’s Bruna Takahashi. In fact, the top four seeds each advanced to the semifinals. Takahashi Bruna defeated Canadian Mo Zhang 4-2 in the top half of the draw. It was at this point that Diaz began her great final run, beating American Lily Zhang (the third seed) 4-0 in the semi-finals and then dominating Takahashi 4-0 in the final.

The doubles finals have already been played. The Brazilian team of Leonardo Iizuka and Guilherme Teodoro won the men’s doubles. The Argentinian team of Lucia Cordero and Hidalynn Zapata won the Women’s Doubles. In the mixed doubles it was Brazil again: the two best-placed singles players took the title together with Hugo Calderano and Bruna Takahashi.

The Teams competition starts tomorrow and the Finals are scheduled for this weekend.

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