Lucas Taylor serves up a national title triumph
 | | Lucas Taylor |
By JONATHAN CLEGG
HACKNEY junior tennis player Lucas Taylor pulled off the finest victory of his career by winning the 12-and-under AEGON Junior National Championship in Bournemouth.
Taylor, 12, secured a straight-sets win over Scotland's Vincent Gillespie to lift the prestigious title in last Wednesday's final.
The triumph represents Taylor's third national title this year - the first time such a feat has been achieved in the 12-and-under age category.
The Hackney City Tennis Club ace lived up to his billing as tournament favourite after overcoming his doubles partner and No2 seed Gillespie 6-2 7-6 in a thrilling match in hot and sunny conditions at the West Hants club.
Taylor, from Barnet Grove, seemed to fly through the first set, losing only two games with the help of some solid baseline hitting that his Scottish opponent seemed unable to answer.
But the second set was a tighter affair, with Taylor spurning five match points as Gillespie picked up his game and battled for every point.
The Scottish youngster fought hard to take the set to a tie-break, but Taylor would not be denied and finally sealed the outcome with his sixth match point to secure the title.
The Bridge Academy pupil later expressed his relief at making his superiority count after five missed opportunities to end the match.
"It feels really good to have won - I'm glad I got there in the end because I had five match points during the match which I let go," Taylor said.
"Vincent played really well and really put the pressure on. When it went to a tie-break it was just really frustrating because I know I should have maybe won some of the earlier points so I was really relieved to win in the end."
Despite playing and practicing regularly with his opponent, Taylor added that he had put his friendship with Gillespie to one side during their final clash.
"Vincent is my doubles partner but we've played against each other so much that it's not like that affects how we play each other," he explained.
"We both really wanted to win and you could tell by the way neither of us would give up. We both kept fighting so it was a really hard match."
The pair underlined their status as the country's leading pair in the 12-and-under category by teaming up to take the doubles title later in the day.
Taylor and Gillespie comfortably beat the Norfolk and Cambridgeshire pairing of Johnnie Carmichael-Plester and Joshua Wilson 6-1, 6-4 to claim the national crown.
The outcome means that Taylor has followed in the footsteps of world No2 Andy Murray, who won a junior national title as a youngster, while Hackney's British women's No1 Anne Keothavong is also a former British junior champion.
Hackney City Tennis Club youngster Lauryn John-Baptiste also produced a successful performance in Bournemouth after securing a third-place finish in the 10-and-under invitational tournament.
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