African Cadet Tennis:Nigeria's Osewa Dumps Top Seed

 Osewa right in a handshake with Barkat Quadri during the Shell cup.

 

Six seed ,Nigeria's Micheal Osewa caused the biggest upset  at the 39th International Tennis Federation and Confederation of African Tennis Junior Championship in Pretoria, South Africa after beating tournament's top seed, Younes Adnane of Morocco 1-6, 6-3, 6-2 to qualify for the quarterfinal of the boy's 14 & under.

 Osewa started the tournament on a losing note as he fell 6-4, 6-4 to Eliakin Coulibaly of Cote D'Ivoire but bounced back to contention with back-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 the University of Pretoria High Performance Centre, seems to be heading the way of form book as the Moroccan took the first set in a convincing manner bitting series of winners for a 6-1 triumph. However, Osewa, a semifinalist at the last edition in Tunisia, took the second set  6-3 forcing Adnane to lose his unblemished record as he was 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.

 All the Nigerian players are still in the race for the doubles title with Adetunji and McLeod qualifying for the quarterfinal of the girl's 16 & under doubles while Quadri and Edward are also in the last-eight of the 14&under.

Osewa and Gabriel are also through to the last-eight in the boy's 14 & under doubles while Itodo and Bulus have also booked a spot in the 16&under doubles.