Courtesy of Jay Crystal, Paddle Palace Club Manager
On June 1st and 2nd the Paddle Palace Club hosted the Rose City Open. With over 90 entrants over two days, it was a well-attended event with great matches and exciting action.
The first two events began at 9am on Saturday. In the 4200 Doubles, Kenichi Sakamoto / Kevin Nguyen beat the favored team of Ryan Hoarfrost and Hung Ho, 3-0, to take home the first place prize of $120.00. Ryan and Hung split $60.00.
In the U3000 Doubles, two PPC club regulars, Chris Opocensky and Leezan Da, took home the first place trophy by posting a better game record in the hotly contested round robin group.
Next, Open Singles featured some top players from the Northwest and Colorado! Colorado’s Keenan Southall was down 2-0 to local defender, Nicholas Daescu, and came back to win deuce in the fifth. He then ran into another local chopper, 2017 Oregon State Singles Champion, Jung Kim. She lost 3-0 to #1 seed Jiwei Xia.
In the other half of the Open draw, Kenichi Sakamoto lost 3-0 to Seattle’s Zexuan Wang. Wang challenged Jiwei in the final but lost 3-1. Jiwei is still undefeated at the Paddle Palace Club!
In the U1500’s, Aditya Venkat won 3-0 over Sayan Saha. The U2200’s saw Keenan Southall win 11-8 in the fifth over Ryan Hoarfrost.
The U1700’s pitted two Portland players against each other, Joel Sommer beat Jae Kauffman 9, 9 and 10 after losing the first game 11-7.
The Novice event has been popular at PPC. The last event of day one featured PPC member Doug Hoy going 4-0 in the Round Robin Event. Jean-Luc Raffaele earned second place.
Day 2 started with two more doubles events. In the 3600 Doubles, Suraj Sindia and Alexander Badmaev split the $100 first place prize. Long Shiue and Zhongkai (john) Xu split $50.00 for second.
U2400 Doubles had PPC clubbers, John Kwak and Sung Choi win first place over the father-son duo of Jeff and Iton Wang.
In the U1900’s Pradeep Anthony Roy defeated Sri Palwai 3-1 to win $100.00 in the last cash event. Sri took home $50.00.
The 1300’s had two more PPC club members in the final. Jeff Schultz prevailed over Jens Prussnat 16-14 in the fourth to win the 1st place trophy.
Two WAY over 40’s met in the O40 Singles. Bend’s Paul Sample won over local Duane Smith.
Junior Singles had Cheery Zhang winning first place over Nachiketh Narendran.
In the last event of the tournament, one of Sean O’Neill’s students, Jon Mann won in three tough games over Brent Wojahn.
A great thanks to all the participants and support staff and all those that came to watch that made this a great event! Special thanks to our tournament sponsors and club partners: Paddle Palace, STIGA Tables, and Nittaku Balls.
A great thanks to all the participants and support staff and all those that came to watch that made this a great event! Special thanks to our tournament sponsors and club partners: Paddle Palace, STIGA Tables, and Nittaku Balls.
