Tournament favourite, Hady El Kordy on Wednesday booked a place in the semifinals of the ITF junior tournament taking place at Integrated Polytechnic Regional College (IPRC-Kigali) tennis grounds in Kicukiro.

Kordy beat French teenager, Michael Kouame in three sets 4-6 6-1 7-6(2) in a match that lasted over 3 hours due to disruption by rain.

The Egyptian who is the top ranked junior player at the tournament told Times Sport that winning the title is his target now.

"Of course the trophy is on my mind but I want to take every match as it comes. Today’s opponent (Michael Kouame) was hard to beat but the win gave me confidence that I can actually win here”

In the other quarterfinal games, Egyptian Ismail Elshaffi lost to Rayern Hermassi from Tunisia, Morocco’s Yazid Lahjomri beat Seungmin Park of South Korea while Italian Covato Matteo eliminated Herman Ndonfack from Cameroun.

In the girls’ singles category, Mariam Ibrahim from Egypt fought hard to beat Slovakia’s Ester Gonosova. She will be joined in the semis by Anna Valitova (Slovania), Manal Ennaciri (Morocco) and Beverley Nyangon from France.

The semifinals will be played on Thursday before the final matches of both singles and doubles on Friday at IPRC-Kigali.

The ITF World Tennis Tour is organized by the Rwanda Tennis Federation, International Tennis Federation and Rwanda’s Ministry of Sports.

The tournament is meant to provide a launch pad for the best young players to go on and achieve success in the professional game.

The top eight juniors at the end of the year go head-to-head at the prestigious season-ending ITF World Tennis Tour Junior Finals.