Tennis-University News – 4th week of October
TU on the road
Being in the fourth week of October the end of the season comes closer quickly. Therefore many of our TU players were fighting for the last points of the year in Asia, Australia and Africa. But also home soil in Germany proved to be successful ground.
After his title run last week, Karim Maamoun was able to extend his winning streak moving into the semifinal of the M15 in Sharm El Sheik. Clinching his remarkable 40th win of the season he will look forward to the last tournaments of 2019 with a lot of confidence.
Japans Tatsuma Ito made his fourth Challenger semifinal of the year in Traralgon. There he had to take a tough loss against hometown hero Andrew Harris, having had a matchpoint in the third set tiebreak.
On sunday a very exciting trip to Japan was crowned with a doubles title at the J2 in Nagoya. Alongside his partner Harry Wendelken from UK, Karlis Ozolins won the final in a convincing manner against the fifth seeded team from Japan. Earlier the week also his TU travel mate Stefan Popovic got a taste of the doubles qualities of the Latvian. In the second round he and his Japanese doubles partner had to take a two set defeat against the later tournament champions.
A much shorter journey Antonia Schmidt had to make for winning a title this weekend. At the A4 indoor tournament in Simmern the 18-year old played convincing tennis and clinched the title in sundays final.
Our top talent from Czech Republic Jonas Forejtek was part of the best eight junior players in the world, competing at the ITF Juniors Masters in Chengdu. After having a slow start losing the first match against Harold Mayot, Jonas got things under way and let two wins follow. Despite his strong matches, including an impressive win over Denmarks Holger Rune, the 18 year old just barely didn’t make it to the semifinals. The fifth place is still a great end to a remarkable Junior career. From now on Jonas will solely serve on the mens tour, beginning with the first round main draw of the high level Challenger 125 in Shenzhen on Tuesday.
A very unfortunate week had Indias top player Praj Gunneswaran. After a 6:2 6:1 win in the second round of the Liuzhou Challenger he wasn’t able to compete in his third round match due to injury.
Next week we are looking forward to the Challenger in Eckental where Ruben Bemelmans has had very successful times in recent years and is on of the crowds favorites in the House of Sports.
home sweet home
At the base in Offenbach many of our Junior players got the last preparations for the upcoming tournaments done. Natan D’Hulst was looking forward to spend a week at home in Belgium where he is going to play the J4 in Sint-Katelijne-Waver, accompanied by Ugnius Bickauskis from Lithuania.
Also our girls Nastia Rakita and Izabelle Persson got ready for a long journey to Canada.
We wish our boys and girls safe travels and the best of luck in their tournaments!
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