This is the second part of this post, and mainly focuses on American player Learner Tien, who was drawn to my attention by Colette Lewis; her description was interesting enough to make me decide that today he would have been the boy I would have followed. A great hint again. The guy is 16 and currently ranks 55 in the ITF junior circuit. He played against the Argentinian Lautaro Midon, 18 year old and 8th in the junior ranking. I have seen Midon playing for some minutes; too short for a complete judgement, but he did not impress me in a particular way, from the little I saw.
Tien is a little jewel that everybody should see playing. He is fairly small – though he may still grow – and serves not particularly well, with a dodgy turn of the racket at the apex of his swing: it seems he swings the wrong side of the racket in a way; it’s hard to describe his weird motion. Watching Learner Tien means seeing huge flat forehands alternated to heavy spin shots, a quite classic double handed backhand, which is nor as explosive nor as consistent as his forehand, a very nice sliced backhand and a completely peculiar attitude for net play, which is lost in modern players. In a match Tien may charge the net 30 times, and not only to close the point, but following true old style chip and charge. Last distinctive feature of his is a remarkable ability in dropshots, which he is able to make land inches after the net. An ability I have seen only in Diotisalvi Maja Chwalinska before, on the junior tour.
Tien is a kind of player that reconciles with males tennis and the most classy players I have seen since Musetti’s edition of Bonfiglio. I lost the first part of the match, in which the American went down 0-4, since Hovde’s one was still ongoing. I don’t know what happened in those initial games, but little by little the American, who offered so many different solutions to win points that Midon didn’t really understand what he was supposed to do, took control of basically all the rallies. Notwithstanding having lost the first set by 6-4, it was anyway quite evident that Tien was the favourite to win. And, indeed, he won the second and third set conceding only 3 games overall. The Argentinian, lacking of a serve that could afford him some easy points, had no chance against such a more complete player and lacked of the necessary power to outcome the difference of skills between the two.
Tien will play the semifinal against the first seed Vallejo, who I have seen beating in the second round the Italian Carboni. I think the situation is similar: I find Tien to own more skills, and I don’t think Vallejo owns the power to fill the gap.
One last line on another special player whom I saw this morning playing on the court next to Hovde’s, while her match against Shnaider match was on. This player is Anastasiya Lopata, 17 from Ukraine. My main focus was on Hovde’s match, of course, so I gave not much more attention than some peaks. Though, having seen the girl for a good 30 mins I can say that: if you want to see a player hitting every shot differently, top, flat, chop, whatever, netplay, lovely dropshots, stopvolley which bounce and come back towards the net, Lopata is the girl you have to look for. She plays wonderful tennis. She lacks of power in her baseline game, but she can fix that, as she is not a small frame; maybe she also lacks a bit of self confidence and competitiveness, but it is needless to say that unfortunately currently Ukrainian 17 year old girls may have other issues to think about than hitting a forehand winner.
