Sorry I have disappeared lately, but I had a bit of a busy period with my job; plus, now it’s time for the blog’s director to work a bit, as the currently ongoing City of Florence forced him to get rid of his usual laziness: as you may have noticed, Franco is currently posting once or twice per day. Though, as Franco keeps posting in Italian since he is too lazy to write in English (I swear he is “quite” capable in doing so), it’s time for me to post an update dedicated in particular to foreign readers, focusing on what happened during the last couple of weeks to my favourite junior girls who competed on the pro-tour.
Let’s actually start from the WTA tour, concentrating for a further time on Amanda Anisimova, on whom we spoke so much during the last month (a well-deserved attention, anyway). After her quite stunning wins against Pavlyuchenkova and Kvitova in Indian Wells, Anisimova eventually lost the following match, against Karolina Pliskova, by 1-6 6-7. Even if I have seen the second set only, my intention was to write a further piece on Amanda; eventually I changed my mind, as it would have been quite on the same lines of the previous ones. The only thing I want to add to such articles and to highlight is that, differently from what happened in the previous two matches Anisimova won, she didn’t get any help from Pliskova, who played at a good level: this means that Anisimova, at least during the set I have seen, was able to play at the same level of a top 10: I personally believe that the one against Pliskova was the match in which Anisimova displayed the best of her tennis. In the following week Amanda was granted a wild card for the main draw of the Miami Open. In the first round she managed to beat another top 50, the Chinese Wang. Unfortunately she forfeited the second round, which she was scheduled to play against Muguruza; great pity: that would have been an interesting match to see. Hope Amanda is ok and that her injury is not a bad one. Following her exploits, the girl has reached 130th position in the ranking: let’s see if she is able to play the next Grand Slam without the need of a wild card.
Quite interestingly, in the first round of the Miami Open there was also the rematch of last year’s Junior Roland Garros’ final, i.e. Claire Liu vs. Whitney Osuigwe: both girls were granted a wild card to the main draw. Liu took her “revenge”, as she easily (too easily?) won by 6-3 6-1. In the following round Liu was defeated in three sets by the strong Croatian Petra Martic who, 1 year ago, after having recovered from a long injury, was out of the top 600 ranked players; now she ranks in the top 40.
Switching to the ITF pro. My friend Ylena In-Albon seems to have stepped up her level: after having won a 15k in Palamnova, she won a further one held in Heraklion, having dropped again only 1 set in the whole tournament and no more than 3 games in each of the remaining matches. Ylena is playing this week another Heraklion 15k: today she has beaten in the quarter-finals the first seed Stefania Rubini and she is scheduled to play the semi-finals against her compatriot Lisa Sabino; however it will go, this girl has won up to now 13 matches in a row: I think it’s time for her to drop 15ks and focus on more challenging tournaments; and I am happy to make this consideration.
Another girl who is continuing to play very, very well, is Eleonora Molinaro: during the last three months, she was a finalist in a grade 1 and won a grade 4 on the Junior Tour (the latter held in Luxembourg, where she leaves: I guess that’s why she competed in it). In the meantime, on the pro-tour, Eleonora won a 15k in Gonesse without dropping a set and losing only 19 games overall, whilst the week before she reached the final in another French 15k having lost, up to the semi-final, only 8 games overall. However, she suffered a heavy defeat by Zavatska, who beat her by 6-2 6-1. Just before these latter results, as we also briefly mentioned in a previous article, Molinaro has reached the final in a 25k, losing by Ferro and won a further 15k: Eleonora is now a top 500 WTA; cheers to her. Notwithstanding the good results in the pro-tour, Molinaro still focuses also on the junior tour, as she is currently playing the Grade 2 in Florence. I begged Franco to write something on her, but he replied me he is too lazy to do that.
In the meantime, British Gabriella Taylor has settled in Australia: she has played there four 25ks and she is currently competing in the fifth: she has won three of them and reached a semifinal in the fourth: thanks to these great results, she currently ranks in the top 200 WTA.
10 days ago also Kostyk Flagellum Dei came back to live, after her Australian exploits. Guess what: she has eventually lost a match, i.e. the semifinal of a 60k in China, against the Russian Kalinskaya – whom I have seen playing live against Roberta Vinci in Budapest: Kalinskaya is very cute, trust me!! For a “normal” 15-year-old girl this would be a massive result, but I guess that for Kostyuk it is just something decent: she has suffered a bit throughout the whole tournament, as she dropped a set per match, before eventually losing. In the quarters, anyway, Kostyk managed to beat top 100 Kumkhum, another player who, like Marta, performed very well in the last Australian Open.
Another junior who confirmed to be experiencing a very positive period is Olga Danilovic: last week (or better, early this week, as the tournament was heavily delayed) she won a strong 25k in S.M. Pula, having beaten in the process Zavatska and Patty Schnyder, the latter with the curious score 6-3 3-6 10-3: it appears that the organisers of the tournament were so desperate, I guess due to weather conditions, that the two girls were “forced” to play a long tie-break in the decider set, as if it were a doubles match. I didn’t even know this was allowed by the rules.
Emiliana Arango has also played some 25ks in this period without achieving significant results, whilst Osorio Serrano, another player on whom we recently focused, has not attempted any pro-events up to now. I guess this year the Colombian will focus only on junior tournaments, trying maybe to reach a very high ranking on the junior tour or significant results in the slams. The same applies to the winner of the Junior Australian Open, the Taipei Liang, as she only played in 2018 the doubles in the Taiwan Open, being defeated in the first round; whilst the other Australian Open finalist, Clara Burel, gave a couple of tries with some 15ks in Hammameth: she qualified for the main draw, but lost both times in the early stages.
