Tennis players’ ‘love’ gone wrong

Tennis used to be one of their common passions.

Quite fittingly, it was during a gathering at a tennis court hosted by their fellow players on Friday night that former Quezon City Rep. Nanette Daza and her former boyfriend Noel Orate Sr. were last seen together.

This was shortly before he reportedly barged into her house, armed and drunk, and was shot dead by her son-in-law.

The gathering was a party thrown by the Amoranto Tennis Club for its members who were born in February. Orate was there, then Daza arrived later but the two had nothing to say to each other. Daza was the first to leave after staying for about an hour.

What their friends observed about the former lovers may have been a prelude to the violent tragedy that was to come later.

“Before he left, he said, ‘I love Nanette so much, I can’t bear not having her in my life,’” said Jun Bilbao, former president of the tennis club, who spoke to reporters on Tuesday, four days after the shooting.

“Nanette just came by to eat, then she left afterward. They never spoke,” said another club member, Rona de Vega.

“Noel even told me, ‘Please tell Nanette that I love her and that I miss her.’ I told him, ‘Why course it through me, why not tell her yourself?’” she recalled.

De Vega said Daza earlier told her about the breakup although she didn’t say who initiated the split. “She told me that Noel was trying to win her back,” she dded.

Bilbao said the 55-year-old Orate,  whom he knew to be a jolly person, was in low spirits that night. “The sadness that he showed us really surprised me because it wasn’t like him. It was the first time we saw him like that,” he said.

Orate also complained that he had been unable to sleep well in the past four days, his tennis buddy recalled.

Both Bilbao and De Vega said Orate had told them that it was he who ended the relationship and not Daza, contrary to what the former congresswoman and her family told the media after the shooting.

Bilbao said he and his fellow club members decided to talk to the press because someone—whom he declined to name—had asked the group “to [talk about] what happened on the evening of Feb. 10.”

But he said they could only share what happened hours before Orate’s death.

“We know Noel, we know Nanette. We don’t know that Allan (Robes). We are not protecting him because we don’t know him,” he clarified.

Robes, Daza’s son-in-law, was arrested by the police and charged for shooting and killing Orate. He claimed he did it to defend himself, his pregnant wife and Daza because the victim had threatened to kill them and then himself if his former lover refused to take him back.

Orate left the gathering at around 10:30 p.m. without saying where he was going. His friends said they didn’t notice whether he was carrying a gun.

“The group is in mourning over such a tragedy,” Bilbao said.