The phrase - "The 3rd time's the charm" - is what Vaughn Wil­son was say­ing yes­ter­day af­ter he won his very first Shell Tran­quil­li­ty Open Men's Sin­gles ten­nis ti­tle at the Tran­quil­li­ty Courts, Port-of-Spain on Tues­day.

It was the third fi­nal that the 28-year-old To­bag­on­ian con­test­ed. How­ev­er, be­fore yes­ter­day his coun­try­man Yohancey Williams de­nied him suc­cess in 2011 and Richard Chung did the same in 2013.

It was sort of a bit­ter­sweet mo­ment as he had to take the ti­tle from his child­hood friend Akiel Duke who was a first-time win­ner as well in 2019.

Wil­son who set out on a col­li­sion course to the ti­tle re­moved the top-seed Nabeel Mo­hammed in the se­mi-fi­nals on Mon­day and re­turned twen­ty-four hours lat­er oust the tal­ent­ed sec­ond seed Duke 7-5, 6-2.

The first set last­ed about just over an hour as the two ti­tle chal­lengers were in­volved in a see­saw bat­tle for cham­pi­onship points. Duke took an ear­ly 3-2 lead on­ly for Wil­son to break his serve and move lev­el at 3, then pro­ceed­ed to make it 5-3. It is at that point Duke mount­ed a coura­geous come­back to tie the set at 5 games apiece and the two bat­tled for about 15 more min­utes on match-point un­til Wil­son cap­tured the first set.

The de­fend­ing cham­pi­on tried to make a fight out of the match but his serve let him down time and time again with a few un­forced er­rors.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Wil­son start­ed to pro­duce sev­er­al aces plough­ing away at the fight in Duke as he even­tu­al­ly wore him down and eased to a 6-2 straight-sets vic­to­ry.

The ic­ing on the cake was the ace he un­leashed at cham­pi­onship point to sound the horns that the new King of Tran­quil was Vaugh Wil­son.

Af­ter the match, Duke told Guardian Me­dia Sports that: "De­spite the loss, he still felt good af­ter giv­ing it his all and the bet­ter play­er won on the day and he was hap­py for his part­ner Vaughn." He is look­ing for­ward to the 2021 edi­tion of the com­pe­ti­tion as he is ea­ger to re­gain the ti­tle he just lost. A very com­posed Wil­son is al­ready look­ing to­wards his ti­tle de­fence.

"The match to­day was all about fit­ness. I am hap­py, I fi­nal­ly won it and I am look­ing for­ward to de­fend­ing it in one month time."

Co-tour­na­ment di­rec­tor Bev­er­ly Cor­bie said de­spite the ten-month de­lay the tour­na­ment was a suc­cess with a great show­ing from the play­ers es­pe­cial­ly the younger ones like Lu­ca Sham­si and El­la Car­ring­ton who are both 15 years of age and made it to the men's semi­fi­nal and women's fi­nal re­spec­tive­ly.

Al­though no of­fi­cial word has yet been giv­en, plans are al­ready in the mak­ing for the 2021 edi­tion of the com­pe­ti­tion which can get go­ing for two a week start­ing around the 25th of Feb­ru­ary.