As many of you know Olga Danilovic is the daughter of the basket champion Predrag Danilovic, who won, within others, 4 Italian Championships and 1 Champions League with Virtus Bologna (a colleague of mine, who is a fan of the team, still loves him). And this explains the first part of the heading. The second part refers, instead, to the fact that this week Olga won her second ITF Pro title in her career, a 15k tournament in Antalya. Her first success on the Pro Tour dates November 2016, when she won a 10k in… Antalya.
As mentioned in my last article I would like to focus a bit on Olga Danilovic and the results she obtained up to now since the girl, born in January 2001, is currently one of the best Junior player, ranking 13th on the ITF Junior circuit.
On the Junior Tour, during last year, Olga has won two grade 2 events: the Kenana Cup held in April and the International Spring Bowl held in May. Further, she was a finalist in the Canadian Open (she was beaten by Iga Swiatek) and semi-finalist in Trofeo Juan Carlos Ferrero, both grades 1. As per Grades A, her best results are the third rounds reached in Wimbledon and in the last Australian Open. However, Olga has obtained her most prominent Junior Tour’s achievements in doubles: last year she has won the Roland Garros, partnering Paula Arias Manjon, and the Orange Bowl, partnering Anastasia Potapova (in the finals they have disgracefully (for me, at least) beaten the only and wonderful Kaja Juvan, partnering for the occasion Lea Boskovic).
Unfortunately I’ve never seen Olga playing live, nor have I found any videos of her matches on Youtube (apart from the finals of the 2015 Petit As she played against Anastasya Potapova, but Danilovic was too young at the time to consider that video for the purposes of this article): I will limit myself to honour her with a few paragraph on her recent win in Antalya.
Danilovic has played two consecutive tournaments in Antalya: the first one was not real lucky for her, since she lost in the first round against 349 WTA Ayla Aksu (not a particularly blessed draw in a 15k). Last week’s draw was much easier as per the first round, since she was paired against Chinese Shou Na Mu, a 16 year old girl without a pro ranking and with a junior ranking around 300. Olga easily dismissed her, winning the match by 6-2 6-2. In the second round Olga met a much more dangerous opponent, the 2nd seed Gabriela Pantuckova, a top 300 with a lot of experience on 15ks, having won seven of them. It was surprising to see how easily Olga managed to win this match, leaving only two games to Pantuckova: the final score was 6-2 6-0. As per stats figure, I would only point out that in both the matches played up to this stage, Olga managed to obtain 70% of points with her first serve and over 50% (63% against Pantuckova!) with her second serve. It seems quite obvious from these stats that the serve is an important weapon for the Serbian.
In the quarter finals, Olga played again a relaxed match, beating Ksenia Palkina by 6-1 6-2: this result was less a surprise than the former one, since her opponent is 27 year old and her current WTA ranking is 788 (even if in 2009 she reached a (decent) best ranking of 163). Again, Olga confirmed her dominancy with the first serve, but this time was able to win less than 40% of the points when serving the second ball. The semi-final was the only match in which Olga experienced some troubles in this tournament: playing against 4th seed Valentyna Ivakhnenko (ranking 380 WTA, best ranking of 217 reached in 2013), Olga was forced to a tie break in the first set, which she won by 7 points to 4. In particular, Olga conceded five break points to her opponent, managing, in her turn, to convert both of the two break opportunities Ivakhnenko granted her. The stats of the 2 players were quite similar, with Danilovic being able to convert a bit less points than in her previous matches with her first serve (62%, still good anyway), but also to increase the percentage of valid first serves (to over 64%, whilst in her previous matches such figure was always around 55%). The second set was much easier for Olga than the first: the effectiveness of her opponent’s serve diminished materially, since Ivakhnenko was able to win only 11 of the 24 points in which she hit a valid first serve, whilst Danilovic’s figures remained constant. Danilovic was able to immediately break her opponent twice, taking a 4-0 lead. Then it was her turn to be broken back twice, allowing the Russian to reach 3-4; nevertheless Olga broke again and secured herself the set, winning it by 6-3.
I predicted that the finals, in which Olga had to play against Austrian Julia Grabher, would have been an interesting and even match, as Grabher is an experienced ITF player, having won three 10ks in her career and, few weeks ago, in Hammamet, a 15k: I was wrong because, again, Danilovic was able to dismiss her opponent surprisingly easily, winning the match by 6-3 6-2. Again Olga showed serve stats consistent with those of the days before (55% of first serves in, over 66% of points won; over 50% of points won with her second serve); she broke her opponent 5 times and obtained overall 14 break points. The match was tight for half of the first set: Danilovic took an early lead of 2-0 but Grabher managed before to equalise and then to break again the Serbian: at this stage, though, Olga managed to win 4 games in a row, gaining the first set by 6-3. The second set was even until 2-2, both players managing to hold their serves; then, again, Olga scored a partial of 4-0, closing the set by 6-2.
It’s the second Pro tournament Danilovic has won in 4 attempts (one of them, though, occurred in 2015, when the girl was just 14), which is quite a remarkable average; in particular, Olga managed to win the tournament without dropping a single set, as she did in the Antalya event she won last year; both times she was forced once to the tiebreak, but whilst in last November’s win in one occasion she dropped 5 games in a set (against Austrian Pia Konig), this time, apart from the set won at the tiebreak, she never allowed her opponents to win more than three games in a single set. In the 2017 tournament, Danilovic did not compete in doubles, whilst in the event she won in 2016 she played also in the doubles tournament, winning it with Slovak Vivien Juhaszova as a partner.
It seems that Olga Danilovic represents a case in which some talent has passed from the father to the daughter…
