Helene Pellicano
The “I like…” series of articles (the one on Elisabetta Cocciaretto was the first of the series, this is the second) are focused on players whom I didn’t know or I’ve never seen playing till little time before the relevant piece was written and who captured my interest for some reason (connected to tennis, of course!). To be fair, this is not 100% an “I like” article, since I saw playing one of the girls I will focus on already 8 months ago; though, I lost track of her till recently and this is why this piece eventually fits the series.
For non-European readers (if any) Malta is a tiny island located just south of Sicily. It is a paradise: ok, the capital la Valletta has been screwed quite a bit, but other towns, as Rabat, are marvellous. There are prehistorical sights which are unique and the see is worthy to be tried. The island has been subject to English dominion, so things tend to work fairly efficiently; though, being in the middle of Mediterranean see, Malta is far less gloomy than the U.K. (U.K. readers, I am in a joking mood this evening, don’t get angry, please; and, anyhow, remember I am Welsh…). Finally, Malta is a real interesting mix of cultures: for instance, Maltese language is written with Latin alphabet, but the words are of Semitic origin.
I organise trips to Malta for convenient prices; followers of TennisUnderworld benefit of a 10% discount.
Anyhow, the most interesting aspect for us is that, even if Malta measures just over 300 square kms, being the fifth smallest state in Europe, and counts less than 500.000 inhabitants, two very strong junior players origin from there, both born in 2002. One of them is more famous and is considered to be one of the most promising juniors, possibly the best European player born in that year: she is Helene Pellicano and we already spoke a couple of times about her on this blog. As we know, Helene used to train in Italy; currently, though, she trains with former Sara Errani’s coach, i.e. Pablo Lozano.
In April 2017 Helene occupied the 120th spot of the Junior Ranking, which is still her best ranking. I saw Helene playing in last Bonfiglio, where she lost in the final round of the qualifications against Matusova, in a match which was closer than what the final result may indicate; soon after, I lost track of her. I recently checked Helene’s profile and found out that, after Bonfiglio, she has basically quitted the Junior Tour, on which she played only two more events, and attempted the Pro Tour; as a consequence, her junior ranking dropped outside the top 400 by the end of 2017. In the months she competed on the Pro Tour, Helène did not achieve amazing results: her best were a semifinal and a quarterfinal reached in two 15k; most of times, though, she was defeated at the early rounds of the 15k an 25k she tried. Possibly, the fact that Pellicano is fairly small has contributed to make her first experiences on the Pro Tour a bit troublesome, maybe more than she would have expected; I don’t know if Lozano has predicted that the girl would have had to face quite a few losses and, if so, if these losses were taken in account as part of the Helene’s development as tennis player. Anyhow, Helene has recently played again on the Junior Tour, as in January she joined two grades 2 in Tunisia, and shown to be in good form: she reached the final in the first one, played in Hammamet: she was eventually defeated by Austrian Sinja Kraus, by 4-6 3-6. The following week, Helene reached a semifinal, which, though, she lost badly against Carole Monnet (the final score was 2-6 3-6), even if just the week before, in Hammamet, Pellicano managed to beat the French girl in three tight sets. These last two weeks were sufficient to Helene to jump back in the first 200 of the Junior Tour. Further, since in 2017 Helene has almost stopped her junior activity for half a year, three of her best six results award her with 20 points (and a fourth result awards 30 points): thus, Helene has the margin to continue to rapidly improve her ranking in the next few tournaments, as she demonstrated to be highly competitive at least in grades 2.
The other player from Malta born in 2002 and who is worth to pay attention to, also played the two Tunisian grades 2 and she performed even better then Helene Pellicano: the girl is Francesca Curmi and she reached the quarter final in the Hammamet tournament (her too, as Pellicano, was beaten by Kraus) and won the tournament in Tunis, having beaten in the final Carole Monnet, in three tight sets. Differently from Pellicano, I have never heard anything about Curmi if not during this month: her first noticeable result on the Junior Tour was a final she achieved in a Grade 3 held during last October; before that, the girl won a Grade 5 held in April 2017. It seems that during the last three months Curmi has risen materially her level and now she owns a better ranking than Pellicano; the 100 points she was awarded with thanks to the win in Tunis, will allow Francesca to reach the 120th spot on the Junior Tour. Likewise to Helene Pellicano, also Curmi can fastly improve her position, as four of Francesca’s six best results awarded her with twenty or thirty points.
