In the past few weeks, there was a lot going on at the Tennis University despite the numerous holidays. Shortly before most of our juniors and pros went into a short Christmas break, it was time to call in top performances in the middle of the preseason. On December 18th the annual X-MAS Battle took place. The four teams, consisting of players, coaches and others connected to the TU, met in the early morning at the HTV. Here the participants competed in various competitions, from skill games to tennis and quizzes, until the afternoon. At the end of the day, much to the chagrin of the players, the team of coaches narrowly prevailed.

After a short break, all teams went to the evening Christmas party, where the children of our junior program were also present, mostly accompanied by their parents. The highlight of the evening was the presentation of the six ‘buffalo of the year’ awards. Adrian Wiche and Carla Winzer were honoured in the juniors section, the award for the under 18s went to Lea Magun, who fought her way through an injury-stricken 2019 in an outstanding manner, and the Czech Jonas Forejtek, who won three Grand Slam titles in the past twelve months. In the adult sector, Jule Niemeier was able to convince the coaches with her tournament victory in Leipzig, but above all with her attitude and fighting spirit on the court. India’s top player Praj Gunneswaran, who was able to crack the Top 100 of the ATP ranking for the first time in spring and played his way up to rank 75, deservedly got the last award.

After the celebrations, some players already said goodbye over the holidays, not so our youngest talents from the Junior Development program. On Friday, they went to the J-4 in Essen, just like the week before. Once again Tudor Batin could assert himself among the under 14-year-olds. The quarter-final against his TU colleague Yash Shrivastava turned out to be a nerve-racking affair, in which the Romanian-born player got the upper hand in the Matchtiebreak and won 10:8. In his two following matches he met the number one and two on the draw and eventually managed to take home another title. 

Despite the following Christmas holidays, many of our players prepared themselves intensively for the new season on the courts of the Kempinski Hotel and HTV. Despite all the hard work, the contemplative part of the Christmas celebration did not come off badly. For example, the 16-year-old Japanese Gen-I spent Christmas Eve at the home of coach Basti Suwanprateep, where he prepared himself for the final spurt of the preseason with roast, dumplings and red cabbage. Together with Ruben Bemelmans, Karim Mammoun and other TU players, he trained for a few more days in Offenbach and then went to Dubai for the first tournament of the new year. Most of the other pros and juniors are already back, traveling around the world in the first week of 2020, tournaments in the USA, Europe, India and Australia lie ahead. 

We wish all our players, coaches and other TU companions all the best for their upcoming tasks and the whole year 2020! 

other success stories