It’s time for the usual “wrap up” article, summarising my impressions on this edition of Trofeo Bonfiglio.
I start from boys, that as usual, I basically didn’t follow. Italian (males) tennis has proved its very good period, as two Italians, Arnaldi and Moroni, have managed to reach the quarter finals and Arnaldi got through to the semis, by beating the first seed Emilio Nava. This must be considered a great result, also because the best three Italian juniors, Musetti, Sinner and Zeppieri, didn’t take part to the tournament. This year I didn’t find (not that I looked that hard) any Tsitsipas, nor any Popyrin, to be honest. But we can’t have a Tsitsipas per year, othervise the Greek wouldn’t be a top 10.
Girls: I must say that, as per quality displayed, this has been, to some extent, the worst edition in the last four years. It was expected to be so since, as I wrote many times, the junior circuit has been drained of the best girls born in 2001-2003 period, and of course the tournament has suffered of the lack of top-notch experienced players. Alexa Noel, a girl lovely to watch due to her unconventional style, deserved to be the winner: she is very spectacular and we need her slices on the tour to counter all the “ovas”. Long life to her. Though, other top seeds of this edition as Navarro, Black, Park, Pellicano and the finalist, Nahimana, were not at the level of the best participants of the past few editions, such as Tauson (the real one, this year she failed), Swiatek, Wang, Potapova, Juvan, Pervushina and so on. Another downside was the bad weather in the quali days (and in the first main draw day too), that made impossible to give an overall look to the different players and to spot the most interesting ones; but that’s noone’s fault.
Though, this torunament confirmed that a new interesting generation born in 2004-2005 is growing up and that the hole in girls’ tour will be soon filled; this new generation is led, of course, by Linda Fruhvirtova, who played a great tournament and reached the semifinals: a sort of miracle, since she has played against girls aging two or three years more than her. Linda is a killer from the baseline, she is consistent and mentally super tough. She has, though, demonstrated some limits, in the sense that she is not able to adapt her game to different situations, as it became evident in the match she lost against Noel; more, she completelly lacks of a net game. Of course, she has all the time to improve these aspects of her game and, even if she will not manage to, she will anyway most probably become a super player.
I wasn’t able to see Robin Montgomery, who played a very good tournament having beaten Park and stolen one set from Fruhvirtova. Also Priska Nugroho, the Indonesian girl who was close to dismiss the Czech prodigy in the first round seemed to be a promising girl and, from the little I’ve seen, Diana Shnaider should become a top junior player in short time. Anastasia Berezov was, of course, my favourite qualifier: she is limited by her smal frame and she is still in a learning process as per her technique, as I understood from her dad. Nevertheless, the girl can play big tennis and mentally she is top notch. She may become an interesting player to follow next year.
Players who did not meet the expectations were, instead, Clara Tauson, who did a disaster both in singles and doubles, but this can happen; Emma Navarro, who wasn’t supposed to lose against Nahimana and I must say, Elli Mandlik, who should have reached at least the quarters and has instead lost against another big surprise of the tournament, Melodie Collard. I was even more surprised about Elli’s early exit after haveing seen her training yesterday; on Collard, instead, I cannot really express any judgement, as I didn’t manage to watch her playing, if not for some minutes against Shnaider. Italian girls: bad, bad. The crisis continues and there are no concrete signs of good players, with the exception of Lisa Pigato: she defended her honour, playing a very good match against Navarro. Then, there is Rossi: it’s ok, to lose from Hurricane Black; it’s not ok to lose by 2-6 0-6, especially for a classy player as Federica is.
Now I need some rest, or better, i need to do some work. If I have time to see something, I will post on Roland Garros which will start, as per juniors, in one week time.
Last, but not least, I want to give a special thank to Colette Lewis who hosted, for the second year, my articles on her blog zootennis and to Dimitry Berezov for the company he offered me during this week (and for offering me to hit with Anastasia, with indecent results).
