I went to see the girls’ final of the Torneo Avvenire and I did not enjoy it so much, as I did not enjoy last year’s one.
I must say that I was pissed off from the start with this final because Ambrosiano, the club in which the event is held, is exactly at the opposite part of the town. The match was scheduled at 11.00 of Saturday, which meant that I had to get up fairly early for my standards; more, it took me one hour to arrive, because I was stuck in several traffic jams caused by people exiting Milan to go out for the weekend. Finally, there were something like 47 degrees and, differently from the central court in Bonacossa, which is where Trofeo Bonfiglio is played, in Ambrosiano’s central court there is no chance to find a seat under the shadow. All this contributed to make the experience not really pleasant.
I will speak in details of the final in a further article, which I have already written: so unlike what I have done with the Roland Garros pieces, this time there is no chance that the second part will never come. In this piece I want to explain why, despite its fascinating name (“Avvenire” means something like “promising future”), I personally don’t love Trofeo Avvenire and Tennis Europe circuit overall. I know the below judgement may be highly contestable and wrong, but it’s ok because the good thing to write as a hobby is that I can write what I want, without facing the risk of losing any money.
It’s not difficult to notice that the best under 16 players do not play Avvenire (at least the girls’ event). Good 15 year old girls and even the best 14 year old girls are already 100% committed to the ITF junior and show little interest in Tennis Europe’s circuit. To be fair, some of them (such as Kostyuk or Potapova) show little interest even in the ITF junior and are playing, as under 16, on the Pro tour. The consequence is that, notwithstanding its incontestable prestige, generally speaking (of course there may be exceptions) one can find two categories of players playing Avvenire: the first one is composed by not really good 15 year old players; the second one by good (but maybe not even the best) 14 year old players. Matches in which only “category 1” players are featured, I can assume not to be really interesting, by definition. Matches in which only “category 2” players are featured, I’m ok with, even if generally I prefer to watch and assess players who are a bit older. Matches which features one player belonging to “category 1” and one belonging to “category 2” are the worst to me, since I get confused.
First issue I have when assessing under 16 players is that, except for kids as Noa Krznaric (but she is not a human being, honestly: she has not turned 14 yet and she already plays Grades A – and she skipped Avvenire), normally girls belonging to category 2 in particular lack the power necessary to hit a winner which ends to be an actual winner; meanwhile, these kids already run as hell. The consequence is that the wanna-be-winner is often hit back by the defender, once, two, three times, until the attacker who, of course, is still young and unexperienced, eventually misses and loses the point and, after a while, the match. This fact, already, makes an assessment on the players harder to carry out.
Second issue: of course, these younger girls miss more than they should and mess up a lot, thanks God: this is perfectly normal and does not annoy me, in principle. Though, fore sure such aspect contributes to make Under 16 matches less enjoyable than Under 18 ones: it’s not great fun to focus on a single match in which too many mistakes are made.
More: today’s junior players (and now I refer to both Under 16 and Under 18 circuit) are in many respects stronger than those who currently age 35 (at the time they were juniors, of course). I know a trainer who was the coach of Francesca Schiavone when she was a kid. To my satisfaction, this person was very impressed by BerghemIga and I asked him: “Man: is Swiatek better than Francesca?” he replied: “Yes, she is, but at Francesca’s time junior tennis was much slower and the level lower: no juniors at the time played as these girl do; today’s ones are much faster and stronger”. I guess he is right. But I think there is also a downside: the overall performance is higher, but what about the strictly technical skills, since so much focus is put on the athletic side of the game?
What I noticed yesterday is that both finalists tried several times to hit drop-shots, which were quite obnoxious, apart from one by Vidmanova which was real cute; all the others, honestly, landed on the service line, just waiting for punishment. This is a bit annoying by itself, but ok; more painful to me is that the punishment only seldom was inflicted: against these weightless balls both girls either missed the winners or tried attacks (fine), but ended to lose the point because neither of them could play a volley. In particular Monnet, who was the older of the two finalists, missed many of those “easy” balls. Further, instead of volleying, the enjoyable French girl hit most of times, as many other juniors do, a full forehand on the flight, even when she was fairly close to the net: the ball constantly ended too short and was too fast and spinned. Due to these quite meaningless shots Monnet several times, instead of being in control of the point, offered her opponent the chance to be easily passed (and, to the honour of Vidmanova, the latter profited well from such occasions). When I see tennis played as such I get nervous: why does a girl who can hit a forehand at amazing speed make such blatant mistakes on easy shots? What about Panatta’s principles, i.e. “let’s teach kids to do well easy things first”? It is in these situations that I miss the more Ylena In-Albon, a.k.a. Chuck Norris: she could show how easy balls should be managed.
In my view, in Avvenire’s matches you don’t see the big Swiatek’s or Osuigwue’s shots, either due to the fact that the players are too young and physically weak or due to the fact they are not good enough to hit them. Plus, you see many mistakes, even in shots which should be basic and easy for high level players, such as a winner against a “service line drop-shot”. Often enough who should win, having displayed a better game, ends up to lose and vice-versa. The mix of the above makes the matches not real fun to me and very confusing; in particular, I am never sure of who between the winner and the loser of an U16 match is the better player and if my assessments are correct. In last year’s Avvenire final this was exactly what happened: having seen Petrenko defeating Hindova, I wrote a comment on this blog (I was not still writing pieces, at the time) that highlighted that Hindova was a very immature player, but owned some shots; as per Petrenko, I said that I was not sure on how she could be competitive in a year’s time, by playing as she did at the time. In this particular case, it seems that my assessment was correct: Petrenko won Avvenire but she is not performing brilliantly on the ITF juniors. Remember that Petrenko was born in May 2001; she is actually older than Iga Swiatek (in the meantime Hindova is doing pretty well, instead). Even if my judgement possibly turned out to be, up to now, a sensible one, yet there was little satisfaction in the process: last year I saw a match in which a girl (i.e. Petrenko), relying on her superior experience but not showing any particular skills, defeated a girl (i.e. Hindova) who instead showed some interesting shots alternated with too many pointless mistakes (I still have nightmares on Hindova’s on the flight forehands and backhands hit from three meters inside the baseline and landing most of times two meters long. I was keeping asking myself: why to hit those shots???). Against all the above, one could say: “this happens also in Grade 2 tournaments, yet you enjoy them”: 100% true: but, in light of its glorious tradition, I would trust Avvenire’s final with higher expectaions than a Grade 2 match.
For all the above, I find Avvenire is too difficult to me to assess: nevertheless, I will try to write a short note on today’s final; so, see you in a while.
