Quiet start to season for Alpha’s Jon continues in Portuguese tournament

It has been a relatively quiet start to the season for Bangor’s Jon McCreedy but the Alpha player was keen to kick-start it when he was part of the Ireland squad competing in the VII Portuguese Junior competition.

In his opening match the Alpha player could hardly have wished for a tougher draw as he faced not only a local player but also one of the seeds for the boys singles Miguel Roche.

Jon found it very difficult to make any inroads into the power of the Portuguese player who went on to win 21-9 21-9.

Last month Jon competed in the Finnish Open and had a difficult draw there too but pushed Finland’s Miika Lahtinen in the singles losing a tight contest 21-17 23-21.

In the doubles he was to team up with France’s Tangi Gouez and they successfully negotiated his first round match, beating Mikael Kuusisto and Teemu Tuuri 21-18 21-11 only to come up against the No1 seeds Rodion Alimov/Nikita Lemeshko.

The Russian pair went through to lose in three sets in the final after ending Jon and his partner’s bid to reach the final 21-8 21-11.