After having focused during last week on juniors’ or very young pros’ performances in the pro Australian Open, it’s now time to switch to the junior tournament.
This year’s draws are fairly strong: the girls’ event cut is set at 92; the boys’ at 103. As per the girls’ event, the only top 10s playing are Tauson and Zheng, but many of the current best players (such as, for sure, Burel, Swiatek, Gauff and maybe Osorio Serrano and Wang) will not compete this year on the junior tour.
I haven’t seen no particularly interesting pairing in the first round, thus I focused on two young Australian girls who I found to be very promising.
Let’s start from the last match I saw, i.e. that of Talia Gibson, who has done so well in the Traralgon Grade 1, vs. the Spanish Carlota Martinez Cirez, a girl 3 years older than Gibson and currently ranking in 50th spot of the ITF Junior ranking. I have seen the first two sets of this match.
Gibson, born in June 2004 and ranking over 1000th spot on Junior ITF, justified the excellent results she has recently achieved. The girl seems to own a normal built and she is not super-powerful (at least compared to other girls playing on the Juniotr ITF, who are though normally quite a bit older than her). The best feature of her game (at least it was today) is her ability to play anticipated shots, enabling Talia to play very close to the baseline: all throughout the match Talia was very good in countering with anticipation her opponent’s lifted shots, who was playing instead a couple of metres behind the line, and in taking time from her. Both with her forehand and two handed backhand, Talia is comfortable in finding angles and to change from crosscourt to down the line shots: this adds variety to her game. Talia was not shy in advancing in the court, even if sometimes she ended in a too advanced position to counter the defences of Martinez, and this costed her a couple of points; nevertheless, I appreciated a lot also this latter feature of her game. Also thanks to her advanced position, Talia managed to display several times a good ability to hit dropshots, which were always successful: her hand seems to be tender. She instead volleyed no more than once or twice and I cannot assess her net game.
Talia serve is curious: it’s not powerful and it seems there is no acceleration at all in her swing; though, it’s very precise and lands always deep (both her first and second serves do): thanks to these features she has aced quite a lot and obtained a few direct points, never offering, in any case, to her opponent easy balls to attack.
I think that Martinez’ tennis, full of spinned shots and high trajectories and more suitable to clay courts, have helped Talia’s performance; anyhow, I believe Talia owns great qualities and may become a very good player. The final result of the match – which is not too important for my purposes – was 4-6 7-6 6-1 in favour of Martinez.
A final note on Talia: a really funny feature of her is that she seems not to be affected in any way by whatever is happening on the court, showing no emotions at all: it seems that she is sort of passing by, when she plays. The above, though, may not be true, as Talia seems to have been affected by the tie-break lost in the second set, judging from the result of the final one (as it is normal, especially at juniors’ level).
The other Aussie girl I have spotted is Anastasia Berezov, born in December 2003 and owning a ranking of 175 on the ITF Junior tour. This girl dared to steal a set by 6-1 from the first seed Clara Tauson (also thanks to the cooperation of the latter) and she led her to desperation until 2-2 in the second set, when Clara managed to break and soon after to equalise. The third set ended 6-2 in favour of the Danish, but Anastasia had many breaking chances which, if converted, may have reopened the match.
Berezov is very small and, due to this, her main problem is that currently she doesn’t own a serve. Also, her toss is not brilliant, as she often places it too much on the left. Having said that, notwithstanding being so little, Anastasia is capable of generating considerable power from the baseline: actually, she could bear with the pace of Tauson, who is not exactly a light player; this was the feature of her game that surprised me the most. Berezov is thus more powerful than Gibson, but maybe she is a bit less imaginative; anyway, like her compatriot, she is able in moving the ball as she wants, even if she tends to play a bit less close to the baseline. Compared to Talia, Anastasia is instead more keen in charging the net: even if the results may not be always brilliant, this can be an important feature of her game, also to steal tempo from her opponents. Plus, being so short, Anastasia is supremely fast and coordinated; she thus owns very good defensive skills.
Australians can be happy, as both Talia and Anastasia seem to own potential and may achieve very good results.
Finally, I have seen the match between Franceca Curmi, a girl from Malta I have already wrote about but I have never seen playing, and Annerly Poulos, a further Australian girl, born in 2003, I didn’t know about, despite her ITF junior ranking being good (about 65). I started to watch the match from the last games of the first set and Poulos, a very powerful player, was easily disposing of the Maltese girl, who seemed to give up any attempt of playing proactive tennis. Quite inexplicably, in the second set Poulos was no able to hit any further shot in the court and Curmi managed to win by 6-0 without really any effort: she just needed to wait for her opponent’s unforced errors. The third set was more in the line of the first one: Poulos conduced each rally and Curmi was always in defence, not really able to find any reaction to her opponent’s superior peace (she may have tried a slice, maybe?). As Poulos’ shots started again to hit the court, she won the set by 6-2.
Due to the fact that the whole match was played only by Poulos, who though plays a kind of power tennis I do not love, and that Curmi didn’t play well, not trying any kind of plan if not purely defensive, I found this match quite boring (also due to the lack of any variation by either player).
After having written so many articles during the last days, I plan to take a little break: for sure I will cover some matches on next Saturday and Sunday; I am not sure if i will manage to write something before. Stay tuned!
