RUBEN GONZALES and Francis Casey Alcantara are looking at their previous loss like a glass half-full with water when they vie in the second leg of the International Tennis Federation (ITF) ASC BMW $25,000 World Tennis Tour next week in Naples, Florida.
“The positive in losing a match is we get a lot of information on what we need to improve for the next match,” Gonzales, 35, said. “So we will take that info and work on it in practice so we can improve for next week.”
“Our game plan is to get better,” said Gonzales, ranked at 236th in the world doubles rankings.
The Filipino duo lost to the third-seeded pair of Alejandro Gomez of the United States and Israel Ore of Columbia, 4-6, 6-1, 10-1, on Naples’s clay court.
The national team mainstays were dominant in the first set where they broke their opponents’ serves twice. But the Filipinos suffered a meltdown after that and managed to win only two games to yield the match.
For Gonzales, they had no excuse for the setback despite coming off a yearlong layoff because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We played a really good first set which I was really happy with,” he said. “Unfortunately we lost three deciding points in the second set.”
“No excuses, I just feel they played well in the second set and carried that momentum into the super tiebreaker and kicked our butts unfortunately,” he added.
Alcantara, a former Australian Open boy’s doubles champion, and Gonzales will try to finish better in the second leg set from February 22 to 28 also in Naples.
The two paired in the Davis Cup World Group II match-up between Philippines and Greece, which brought in world No. 6 Stefanos Tsitsipas, in March 2020. They prevented a Greek shutout by beating Markos Kalovelonis and Petros Tsitsipas in straight sets.
They own a silver medal from the 2017 Southeast Asian Games in Kuala Lumpur, with Alcantara partnering with Jeson Patrombon in snatching the gold from Gonzales and Treat Huey in a historic all-Filipino final at the Philippines 2019 SEA Games.