TU leaving marks in Australia

The last week of January at the TU was dominated by the Australian Open. After the breakthrough of Jonas Forejtek as the double champion of the tournament last year, Karlis Ozolins managed to get deep into the draw in 2020. After his two convincing opening wins, he met the sixth seeded Swiss Leandro Riedi in the round of sixteen. In his third encounter, the Latvian again left out hardly any opportunities and once again did not drop a set. Only in the quarter-final against the Russian Igor Agafonov Karlis did not get off to a good start and lost the first set 3-6. After a very tight tie-break in the second set, the Latvian managed to turn the match around and entered his first Grand Slam semi-final with a final score of 3-6 7-6 6-3.

On Friday morning German time, after some delay due to the rainy weather in Melbourne, he faced fifth seeded Arthur Cazaux. In the first set, Karlis could rely on his strong serve, as he had throughout the tournament, and won the opening set 6-4. After an early break and being 2-0 down in the second set, however, the Latvian lost the thread. From then on, little went together and the Frenchman stepped off the court 7 of Melbourne Park with a 4-6 6-1 6-2 win. But after a frustrating end to a great week in singles, Karlis was far from over yet. Less than 1.5 hours after his semi-final, he had to play alongside Mikolaj Lorens from Poland in the final of the doubles competition. The duo proved their nerves of steel during the whole week. In the quarterfinals, the top seeded team Cazaux/Mayot could be defeated in the tiebreak. With a similar result against the British team Fery/Gill, who were seeded seventh, a spot in the final was secured the following day.

Only moments after his semi-final exit in singles Karlis entered the court again. In the match for the title and thus the succession of his Tennis-University colleague Jonas Forejtek, the pair Ionel/Riedi was waiting for the Latvian/Polish team. After their opponents had already served for the first set at 5-4, Karlis and Mikolaj fought their way back into the game with a break and were able to win the set with a 10-8 in the tie-break. An inattentiveness at 5-6 Deuce and the no-ad rule led to a decisive match tiebreak. In the following, the momentum became noticeable and the Swiss/Romanian team crowned themselves winning 10-4 at the end.

So it was a frustrating last tournament day for 17-year-old Karlis, who showed in his week in Melbourne which possibilities his tennis ability offers him. If he can focus on retrieving these on court, his current ITF juniors ranking of six will not be the end of the line for him.

After TU Pro Karim Maamoun was competing on Challenger level last week, this week he served at the ITF M25 in Nonthaburi, Thailand. Until the semi-final the Egyptian had no problems with his opponents. In the quarterfinals he also benefited from the retirement of the Kazakh Denis Yevseyev at 6-4 4-1 for Karim. Only in the round of the last four Uzbekistan’s Khumoun Sultanov did prove too strong for Karim. 1-6 2-6 was the result of the match in which Karim was unable to fend off any of his five break points. Still, it was a decent week for the 17-time Future winner. With 45 points for the ITF ranking, he climbs two spots up to 15th place.

The 28-year-old was similarly successful in the doubles as well. Alongside his German doubles partner Sebastian Fanselow, he also reached the semi-finals in a sovereign manner, where the Thai duo Ratiwatana/Trongcharoenchaikul stopped them in front of their home crowd.

In the following week, the German/Egyptian duo will try to build on their success. From Tuesday on another Future will take place in Nonthaburi.

For the children of our junior development program last week did not only consist of tennis and fitness sessions. For the first time, the boys and girls sat down as a group with mental coach Michael von Kunhardt to talk about the mental aspects of the sport. This is an enormously important topic for the 11 to 15-year-olds, which is why regular sessions with the experienced mental coach will take place in the future, in order to prepare the children for a successful career, not only from a sporting and physical point of view.

other weekly reports