Joewyn Pascua and Exequiel Jucutan hope to get some push from the hometown crowd as they slug it out with the regular campaigners in the Palawan Pawnshop-Palawan Express Pera Padala (PPS-PEPP) Urdaneta leg tennis tournament, which got under way yesterday (Friday) at the Urdaneta Tennis Club in Pangasinan.
Pascua and Jucutan primed up for the Group 2 tournament with big reversals in the last PPS-PEPP leg in La Union last week, with the former clinching the boys’ 12-and-under crown against top seed JT Bernardo and the latter frustrating No. 1 Andre Jarata for the 14-U title.
But they will be up against a host of talented rivals also out to gain ranking points in the five-day event, sponsored by Palawan Pawnshop headed by President and CEO Bobby Castro and presented by Slazenger, including Justin Erpelo, Prince Lim and Thomas Gabuat (12-U), while Jarata is raring to rebound together with Eric Bajet in the 14-U side.
Raymond Gabuco, on the other hand, eyes a sweep of the boys’ 16- and 18-U plums, while fellow Pangasinense Anna Demyer is also fancied in the two premier divisions in the girls’ side of the tournament serving as the third of the four-stage Northern swing of the country’s longest talent search supported by the Unified Tennis Philippines, including PPS-PEPP, Cebuana Lhuillier, Wilson, Toby’s, Dunlop, Slazenger and B-MEG.