Two real welcome comebacks!

I am happy to write this piece, because it seems that two girls I like very much have put an end to a quite negative period of their respective careers and managed to start again to play at high levels.

Both Iga Swiatek (a.k.a. BerghemIga) and Ylena In-Albon (a.k.a. Chuck Norris) have recently suffered bad injuries (the former to an ankle, the latter to a ligament, I think) which stopped them for quite a while (especially Iga’s injury was a long one) and ruined their last season.

Iga has returned to play in a competitive match last January, after six months of stop: she played in the doubles of the Fed Cup’s match Poland vs. Turkey. Two weeks ago she competed only in the doubles in one of the continuous 15ks held in Sharm El Sheikh, whilst last week she played her first singles match since July. Of course Iga did what she is used to doing, i.e. she won the tournament, even if her life was not always easy, as she dropped a set 3 times in 5 matches played: when she plays 15ks, she is used to dropping only a few games per match. I followed her a couple of times on the live scores, and it seems that all the features of nice-old Iga are still there: it can still happen that she loses three games in a raw, double-faulting twice per game and then she wins 12 games in a row.

Iga played also last week’s event in Sharm and, again, she performed decently: she reached the semifinal, which she lost against 18-year-old Turkish Cengiz. Iga signed a noticeable record in this match by hitting 18 double faults: thus, she was awarded the “March-2018 Camila Giorgi” price; though it must be said that this young girl, after the long stop, has played 18 matches in two weeks (as she played both singles and doubles events in Sharm), some of which were long: it might have been that so many matches in a row were just too many for her and that the tiredness she might have felt against Cengiz affected the shot of hers which is more wobbly, i.e. the serve. Anyhow, I don’t think Iga could have done any better in her comeback and I am sure she is happy with herself; she has booked for a Porceddu in S.M. Pula; though, unless someone awards her with a wild card (please, organisers, remember that the girl is the finalist of last year’s Bonfiglio), I don’t think she will manage to play not even the quali, as the tournament is real strong (even Laura Siegmund is signed in (???)) and her ranking dropped vertically during these months of inactivity. Anyhow, the only matter is that my BerghemIga, whom I judge to be the purest talent I have seen in Juniors together with Kostyuk, is back; I’m sure it won’t take long for Iga to reach her best ranking if she is fine.

The second comeback I welcome with a lot of enthusiasm is Ylena In-Albon’s: to be fair, In-Albon’s one is not really a comeback: she was forced to stop from last August to the following October; in November Ylena played a good 15k in Heraklion, in which she reached the final; but since then she played several other 15k events without achieving any positive result. Though, eventually Ylena’s turn arrived: the third tournament the Swiss girl played in Palmanova, which ended two days ago, was the good one for her, as she won it: the process was easy for her until she reached the semi-final, in which she has beaten 4^th seed Catharina Gerlach by 5-7 7-5 6-1, in a match which went over for three hours. The final was instead easier for Ylena, as she has beaten 3^rd seed Shinakova, currently 406 WTA but former 130, with the score of 6-1 7-5.

I am happy for Ylena and I hope that this result raises the confidence in herself: Ylena holds, in fact, a crucial role in the destiny of tennis:[1] since she plays such a different kind of game from the one that it can be usually seen on the junior tour, Ylena is one of the girls, together with a handful others, to whom God attributed the thankless task to make sure that future girls’ tennis won’t become as monotonous as men’s, avoiding that all future players will be clones of Serena Williams. This is why Ylena, beside being known as Chuck Norris and the Avenger, is also known as “Power Ranger”, notwithstanding the fact that she is the shortest girl to whom the above important task is attributed: she is even shorter than Maja Chwalinska (by the way, where is Maja???)!!.

Ylena now will go back home and, from what I know, the next tournament scheduled for her is a 15k in Heraklion. I hope the tiny Swiss will manage to step to next level real soon, dropping 15ks and playing no lower than 25ks; but to do that in a meaningful way, she has to find more consistency as she should manage to reach the semis in basically each 15k she plays and win one of those tournaments every three or four attempts. Ylena indeed has the ability to reach this level soon enough, as her convincing win against Shinikova demonstrates.

Other results from the last weeks: Gabriella Taylor in Australia won her second 25k event in three attempts, again without dropping a single set in the process; Paigina reached the final in Manacor whilst Potapova  lost in the first round of a 25k in Altenkirken; turning to the Junior Tour, Eleonora Molinaro, quite curiously, played and won a Grade 4 in Luxembourg, probably held in her own club: in the process, she lost 19 games overall.

[1] I am knowingly exaggerating. But just a bit.