Bored in the U.S.A.

I am so late in writing this piece that I can pretend it to be a sort of a Christmas present for my readers. Notwithstanding the delay, I find to be fair to summarise what happened in the U.S. campaign which ended a couple of weeks ago with the win by Whitney Osuigwe of both Eddie Herr and Orange Bowl, the two tournaments that put an end to the 2017 season. I found the U.S. campaign to be quite disappointing, honestly: and I am sure that Bruce Springsteen would have too. To be fair, being a Grade 1, Eddie Herr could not be considered a weak tournament; instead, I found this year’s participation in Orange Bowl to be extremely poor. For sure Orange Bowl suffered from its unlucky spot in the calendar: as known, the tournament falls in December, a period in which if not most, at least a substantial part of the strongest players have already ceased competitions and are enjoying a break before starting the preparation for the new season: as a consequence, 2017 Orange Bowl looked as a U.S. national event more than a Grade A.

Both tournaments profited from the participation of no. 1 in the world, American Whitney Osuigwe. Also Argentinian Maria Lourdes Carle competed In Eddie Herr; there were no other top 20 in the main draw but, if I counted correctly, overall, 10 top 50s participated: a respectable draw for a Grade 1. As per Orange Bowl, instead, besides Osuigwe there was no other top 20, being the second seed in the acceptance list Elysia Bolton (23); within the first 10 seed in the entry list only 3 were not American and the cut of the tournament was set quite high: at spot 159. The worst ranked player admitted directly to the main draw was Alexa Noel; quite curiously, due to the great results she has recently achieved, Alexa was the second seed in the main draw, ranking in 20^th spot at the time the tournament took place.

The consequence of all the above was that, both in Eddie Herr and Orange Bowl, the gap between Osuigwe and her opponents was too evident and the American gained both tournaments easily enough, winning most of her matches without even being seriously challenged.

Whitney dropped only one set in Eddie Herr: this happened in the final, in which she faced French Claudia Burel, who ranked 78^th before Eddie Herr started and who ranks 41 nowadays. In the other rounds Whitney lost only a couple of games per match, except for the quarter finals, in which she went through by beating Danish Clara Tauson 7-5 6-4. Second seed Carle’s tournament was instead disappointing, as she lost in three sets (6-1 5-7 6-7) in the third round, against the above mentioned finalist Burel. As per this latter girl, I never heard about her before and in my view this tournament does not give definitive indications on her potential: beside Carle (and Osuigwe, of course, against whom, anyway, Burel managed to win a set), the other opponents of hers were not indeed particularly well known. Quite curiously, most of the top seeds of Eddie Herr  lost in the early stages of the tournament: Lulu Sun (3), Juki Naito (4), Nika Radisic (6), Natasha Subhash (7) all exited in the first round; Cathy McNally (8), Joanna Garland (9) and Hailey Baptiste (10) were dismissed in the second round. Only seed 2 Carle and seed 5 Sato reached the third round, which they both lost: as a result, besides Osuigwe, no top 50 player accessed the quarter finals of the tournament.

In Orange Bowl there were fewer upsets than in Eddie Herr. Osuigwe dropped two sets in the course of the tournament: one in the second round against our friend Cori Gauff (who played in Orange Bowl as her first tournament after her astonishing performance in the U.S. Open): she thus confirmed to be one of the players to be followed more closely in the next season; a further set was dropped by no. 1 seed in the quarter finals against young American Vanessa Ong, born in 2002 and who, with this result in the Orange Bowl, managed to break in the top 100 players of the ITF junior ranking. Whitney faced some further troubles in the semi-finals against 9^th seed Garland, who forced her to the tie-break in the first set, whilst she dominated the final, dismissing Ukrainian Margaryta Bilokin by 6-1 6-2. In all other matches she played, Osuigwe never conceded more than 2 games to her opponents. As per the other finalist, Margaryta Bilokin, born in 2001, she managed to find confirmation to some great performances she offered in 2017: during last May Bilokin won three Grades 4 in a raw – all of them played in the U.S. –; she then reached a semi-final and a final in two Grades 2, followed by a semi-final in the Grade B1 Pan-American ITF Championship, having been (again) easily dismissed by Whitney Osuigwe: 2-6 2-6 was the final score. In the process of reaching the final of Orange Bowl, Bilokin was able to beat good opponents: most notably the third seed Elysia Bolton in the first round (winning easily the match by 6-3 6-0) and, thereafter, Danish Clara Tauson and Japanese 5^th seed Naho Sato; in the semi finals, Bilokin crushed the American wild card Beck by 6-1 6-1, before clearly losing by Osuigwe. Following these recent good results, Bilokin has reached a ranking of 32 in the ITF junior tour and she is indeed another girl who is worth to be followed closely. Overall, in Orange Bowl 4 of the top 10 seeds reached the quarter-finals and two of them the semi-finals: as said, fewer surprises than in Eddie Herr. A special mention goes to the semi-finalist wild card Chloe Beck, at least due to her win against Alexa Noel, who eventually lost a match (in the second round) after 13 wins in a row, and due to her win in the quarter-finals against 6^th seed Radisic.

2017 ends as such: it’s time to say goodbye to players whom we followed closely in this blog such as Rybakina (a.k.a. the Latecomer), In-Albon (a.k.a. Chuck Norris), Appleton and Boskovic. They will all leave the tour, having turned 18: we wish good luck to all of them for their future careers, but a special hug goes to Ylena In-Albon, one of my favourite players. More, I doubt that next year we will see competing on the Junior Tour other formidable players (even if they would be entitled to), such as Bianca Andreescu, Amanda Anisimova, Kaja Juvan, Claire Liu, Anastasia Potapova, Marta Kostyuk; also Whitney Osuigwe, I guess, will play much less, having virtually won everything she could. Though, there’s a chance to see most girls of this latter group enrolled in some junior Slams or in the Youth Olympic Games; so no anticipated greetings to them.

As per new entries: 2018 should be the year of Cori Gauff, who I expect to enter in the top 10 players at least; as stated, Margaryta Bilokin could be a favourite to definitively emerge and we will check if Alexa Noel, Vanessa Ong, Clara Burel and Chloe Beck will be able to confirm the exploits they recently made.  I am also looking for some signs of life from Noa Krznaric and Elisabeth Mandlik. Though, there is a player who was really unlucky this year and she is Iga Swiatek. She already reached top 10 and I judge her to be the best junior player I’ve ever seen playing live. She suffered a bad injury in July and since then she could play no more in 2017: she basically lost a year in her career. From what I know, she is recovering well: I hope that 2018 will reward her with huge successes, to compensate all the bad things that happened to her in 2017.

A happy new year to all the readers from Franco, Paolo and myself.