A deaf teenager from South Korea has wowed the crowd at the Australian Open by reaching the second round of the boys' singles.
Lee Duck-hee, 14, overcame Australia's Jacob Grills 6-4 7-6[4] to set up a meeting with ninth seed Christian Garin, of Chile, in Melbourne yesterday.
The youngster won the Under-12 title at the Eddie Herr International Junior Championships in Florida and is believed to have a promising career ahead of him.
He said that his disability actually helps him to concentrate while on court.
"Actually, I don't care about my disability at any time, and on the court it's easy to focus on my match because I can't hear anything," said Lee.
One thing that does cause him to worry is not being able to hear the umpire's calls, which he said happened a few times during his victory over Grills.
"I do worry about that because today it happened a lot of times," he added. "The chair umpire already called 'wait', but I couldn't hear that, so there were a lot of lets."
This is Lee's first Grand Slam tournament.
Michael Penkman
