EU Team Outshines Korea-US Pair
By Kang Seung-woo
Staff Reporter
The Netherlands' Donna Heinsbroek and Finland's Riku Warjovaara won the 4th Diplomatic Tennis Championships, co-hosted by The Korea Times and SK Telecom.
In a one-set doubles final of the annual tennis event at the Hyatt Hotel in Seoul Saturday, the American-born wife of Dutch ambassador Hans Heinsbroek and the first secretary and deputy head of missions at the embassy of Finland edged the Kim Ghee-whan-Curtis Gartenmann team, each from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the embassy of the United States, with a 6-5 victory.
Twenty-eight players from 13 countries participated in the competition, designed to promote mutual understanding and friendship among diplomats in Seoul, and were divided into four groups, Blue A and B, and White A and B, and the top two teams from each pool advanced to the quarterfinals.
The winners, who claimed all three victories in Blue A, downed Maria Viotti from the Swiss Embassy and Kim Jae-dong from The Korea Times team 6-5 in the second round to face Hungary-Slovakia in joint pairs.
In the semifinals, they gained a shutout win over ambassadors Miklos Lengyel and Pavel Hrmo of Hungary and Slovakia, respectively.
