Tellez Earns His First Shot at a Title
| July 11, 2023
Tyson McGuffin assured the crowd that he was OK.
One of the PPA Tour’s quintessential showmen, McGuffin has dealt with a series of injuries during the past season, but he looked back in form Wednesday in St. George, Utah at the Red Rock Open.
“Oh, I’m not going anywhere,” McGuffin said.
McGuffin is here to stay, but what about Pablo Tellez?
Tellez might be relatively new to the big stage, but he looked pretty comfortable Wednesday, charging through the singles bracket and earning a spot opposite McGuffin when the two will play for the singles title on Championship Saturday.
The sixth-seeded Tellez will be getting his first shot at a gold medal. He lost just one game on the day to No. 2-seeded Jay Devilliers in the semifinals before rallying in dominating fashion to take the next two games for the victory.
“I’ve been practicing a lot more,” Tellez said. “Last year, I didn’t, and it showed. I was practicing for about an hour every other day last year. Now I’m playing for five or six hours every day.”
And while McGuffin moved into the final with a 11-3, 11-2 domination of Connor Garnett, saying he has played and practiced against Garnett “like 60 times, so I had a decent plan,” Tellez admitted that he was a bit more green against Devilliers.
“I think the first game, he surprised me with some changes he’s made since the last time we played,” Tellez said. “It threw me off.”
One thing that didn’t throw him off was the elevation in Utah. While it’s a significant change from where the players were last week in Daytona, Fla., Tellez said it wasn’t a problem for him.
“I grew up in altitude,” he said of his native country of Colombia. “This feels like home to me.”
Devilliers went on to win the bronze medal, topping Garnett in that match-up. Garnett made the medal round thanks to a quarterfinal victory against No. 1-seeded Federico Staksrud. Neither No. 1-ranked player in the men’s or women’s field, Ben Johns and Anna Leigh Waters, are playing this week in Utah.
On the women’s side, No. 1-seeded Catherine Parenteau will take on third-seeded Salome Devidze in the final. Neither of the two finalists lost a single game Wednesday. Lea Jansen won the bronze.
