THE Bermuda flag was flying high over South Carolina after two of the Island's top juniors earned singles titles at the same junior event.

Teenagers Ashley Brooks and Gavin Manders destroyed their respective fields to make it a Bermuda clean sweep at the Wildewood Junior Tournament in Columbia.

The triumph of 15-year-old Brooks was all the more remarkable in that she was unseeded, while Manders lived up to his top seeding by winning an epic final.

Manders faced number three seed Chris Peek in his championship match. After winning the first set 6-2, Manders lost the second by the same score. The players then battled it out in a gruelling third set, which the Bermudian eventually won 11-9.

Earlier in the event, Manders had won a place in the last four with comfortable victories over Patrick Rogers and Andrew Macropoulos, losing just one game against each.

In the semi-final against fourth seed Will Grist, Manders took a testing first set 7-5, and then polished off his opponent 6-0 in the second.

Manders and playing partner Corey W. Smith were also runners-up in the 18 doubles.

Brooks edged her tight, two-set final against sixth seed Eily Braid, 6-4, 6-4, a match in which she lost more games than she did in her previous four rounds combined.

Blake Thompson suffered the dreaded double bagel, going down 6-0, 6-0 to Brooks in the round of 32, before the Bermudian starlet dispatched third seed Kendall Rich 6-2, 6-1.

Caitlin Conley was Brooks' quarter-final victim, going down 6-1, 6-0, before Brooks romped through the semis, taking out number five seed Rachael Hesling 6-2, 6-1.

The three-day event took place two weeks ago.

Both players are students of the Van Der Meer Tenis Academy in Hilton Head, South Carolina and what they have learned is starting to pay tangible dividends in the form of silverware.

Brooks felt the comprehensive nature of her victories in the early rounds of the 32-draw tournament had not helped her when it came to a tight final.

And far from getting carried away by her victory, the Bermuda number one was analytical about her performance.

Speaking from the US, Brooks said: "I did not play to the best of my ability in the first couple of matches.

"Because those matches were pretty easy, I was not having to hit a lot of shots in long points.

"When it came to the final, the points were much longer and although the score was 6-4, 6-4, it took a long time."

She added that she felt her game was improving steadily under the programme at Van Der Meer, which this academic year was focussing more strongly on tennis.

"I'm on a different schedule now and we're doing four hours of tennis a day instead of three and I like that better," she said.

"My game is improving, but now I feel I just need to get more consistency. I want to be able to hit 20 balls in a row instead of 15."

The Fed Cup player and 2002 Caribbean 14-and-under Development Championships singles champion revealed her plans to return to the island next spring with a dual aim.

First she will play in two local tournaments, the Island Construction Open and the Argus Open, as she bids to retain her spot at the top of the national rankings.

That will aid her preparations to take on top juniors from around the world in Bermuda's ITF Junior Tournament, which will take place in the first week of August next year. World junior ranking points will be up for grabs.

Brooks' main coach at Van Der Meer is Denis Donovan, the former director of tennis and development at the Palmer Academy, who was recently training top level players on the Japanese national team.

Mr. Donovan said: "She's really picked it up in the last month. The thing with Ashley is that she's so talented ? now she's actually starting to realise that. She came here very young and now she's maturing.

"Basically she can hit every shot, which a lot of girls can't do. She can mix it up and play drop shots and a lot of shots the guys play."

Asked how far he thought Brooks could go, Donovan said: "What we do here is prepare them for college, so they are hopefully ready to go and play in a top college team.

"After that, who knows? It's obviously very tough to reach the highest level in any sport."