It was a Super Saturday on day two of the Inter-regional Country Championships, with a huge 264 matches played across singles and mixed doubles formats.<\/p>\n
Defending champion Matthew Hicks<\/strong> (Barwon) progressed through to the men\u2019s open singles final, after defeating Goulburn\u2019s Luke Dixon 6-1 6-0. Hicks will play Traralgon\u2019s Aiden Fitzgerald<\/strong>\u00a0in the final.<\/p>\n \u201cLuke was a bit injured so it was a bit hard to play against him in the semi, but I\u2019m feeling pretty good and it\u2019s good to get some matches under the belt,\u201d said Hicks, who in 2015 took home all three singles, doubles and mixed doubles titles.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m a full time coach in Geelong, and I love coming to this event because I coach a lot of the juniors who are here, and it\u2019s a chance to really lead by example. I try to be a good role model for the kids on how to behave and what to eat.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s one of the best events for the year because as a team we always support each other, and it gives the young kids in the 12\/u good experience to be able to watch the Open matches,\u201d explained Hicks who hopes to lead the Barwon team to their eighth straight Inter-regional victory.<\/p>\n Hicks will also compete in the final of the men\u2019s open doubles with Adam Lasky against Jarrod Bingham\/ Luke Dixon (East Gippsland).<\/p>\n In the Open women\u2019s singles final, 16 year old Olivia Ryan<\/strong> (Barwon) is expecting a tough match against top seed Eliza Long<\/strong> (Loddon Campaspe).<\/p>\n Ryan overcame Loddon\u2019s Jess Hartland (6-1 3-6 10-8) in the semi-final, to give her a finals berth while Long was too strong for Sophie Vickers (6-4 6-2).<\/p>\n \u201cI was expecting to come here and have a few good matches, but not get to the final so it\u2019s surprising but I\u2019m looking forward to it.<\/p>\n \u201cEliza is a pretty good player, it will be a really tough match but you never know. Tomorrow I will follow the same routine, stay relaxed, not get too anxious and just play my game and see what happens.\u201d<\/p>\n Sunday will also see Ryan compete in the open women\u2019s doubles final, alongside Nicole Mullen. The pair will come up against Loddon Campaspe\u2019s Eliza Long\/ Jess Hartland.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It was a Super Saturday on day two of the Inter-regional Country Championships, with a huge 264 matches played across singles and mixed doubles formats. Defending champion Matthew Hicks (Barwon) progressed through to the men\u2019s open singles final, after defeating Goulburn\u2019s Luke Dixon 6-1 6-0. Hicks will play Traralgon\u2019s Aiden Fitzgerald\u00a0in the final. \u201cLuke was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5914,"featured_media":14863,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5914"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14862\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}