At the GB1 Asian Closed Jr Tennis Championships held at the Indore Tennis Club in Central India, junior world No. 4 and top-seeded Noppawan Lertcheewakarn extended her personal-best winning streak on the ITF junior circuit to 16 matches when she beat No. 3 seed Jessica Yang, 6-2, 6-0, to win the coveted girls' singles title earlier on Saturday.

The Chiangmai native has been victorious in her last three events, beginning with the Grade 1 Chief Minister's Cup in Sarawak three weeks ago, followed by another win at the G1 Mitsubishi-Lancer in Manila.

However, by virtue of her runner-up finish at a GB1 event, Jessica will receive 120 computer ranking points for singles alone, which should be sufficient to move her past Jessie Rompies of Indonesia, who lost in the early rounds at Indore, as well as Zhou Yi-Miao, who has been concentrating on ITF Women's Circuit events since late last year.

That should be good enough for 3rd overall in Asia, behind world No. 4 Noppawan Lertcheewakarn and No. 13 Kurumi Nara of Japan.

The last player from Hong Kong to finish runner-up or better in the girls' singles was of course Venise Chan, who came second to Ayumi Morita at the 2006 Asian Closed Jr Tennis Championships, which was held in Korea that year. The Hong Kong prodigy was far from disgraced in a 6-3, 6-3 loss. As a matter of fact, Venise had a game point at 3-3 in the first set and two more when leading 2-0 in the second.

But each time, Morita was able to step up a notch, and was evidently the player who reveled in the windy conditions in Seogwipo.

Even before the final against Venise, the highly-touted Gunma native had already reached four C25 semifinals on the ITF Women's Circuit, was a finalist at the C50 Fukuoka, and was ranked in the Top-300 on the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour Singles Rankings. Moreover, the Japanese had made her WTA Tour singles main draw debut as a wildcard at the US$1,300,000 Tier I Tokyo (Pan Pacific) Open 2005 before falling to No.4 seed and eventual semifinalist, Maria Kirilenko, 6-4, 6-4.

In the boys' draw that year in Korea, Bai Yan of China defeated Lebanon's Bassam Beidas in the final, 6-2, 6-2, to lift the title.

In any case, unless records suggest otherwise, the first player from Hong Kong to reach a regional 18U girls' singles final was Paulette Moreno, who did so at the 1985 Asian Junior Championships in Bangladesh when the HK standout came second to former ITF Top-10 player, Akiko Kijimuta of Japan, in the title decider.

Results
Asian Closed Junior Tennis Championships (GB1)
Indore Tennis Club, India
7 – 12 April 2008

GIRLS' SINGLES

First Round
(3)Jessica Yang (HKG) d. (LL)Preethi Ujjini (IND) 6-0 6-0

Second Round
(3)Jessica Yang (HKG) d. Nidhi Chilumula (IND) 6-2 6-1

Third Round
(3)Jessica Yang (HKG) d. Celina Goetti (SIN) 6-4 6-0

Quarterfinals
(3)Jessica Yang (HKG) d. (8)Alexandra Kolesnichenko (UZB) 2-6 7-5 6-4

Semifinals
(3)Jessica Yang (HKG) d. (14)Miyabi Inoue (JPN) 6-4 6-4

Final
(1)Noppawan Lertcheewakarn (THA) d. (3)Jessica Yang (HKG) 6-2 6-0

Photo courtesy of Jiro