Pic taken from http://www.copacafe.com/
The Porto Alegre Grade A is coming to an end, as tomorrow the semifinals will be played. Though, the biggest upset has already materialised (even if, statistically, it was unavoidable): the first seed Maria Osorio Serrano has eventually lost, after winning 26 matches in a row, 24 of which this year: she has been dismissed in the quarter-finals by the Georgian Ana Makatsaria, with the final score of 6-7 4-6 in favour of the latter. Prior to this match Osorio had suffered her last loss (a bad one, by 0-6 1-6) against Juvan in Chengdu, during the Junior Masters held in last October: all the matches won between October and now worthed to the Colombian the win of four Grades 1 in a row, all held in South America, i.e. the Coffee Bowl, the Copa Barranquilla, the Assuncion Bowl and the Banana Bowl. Osorio’s achievement is noticeable indeed; though, to tell the truth, I must say I don’t attribute to it such a great value. It should be highlighted that to build up this winning streak, Osorio has beaten only two top 100 both during the Coffee Bowl (i.e. Mandlik (82) and Ma (97)) and the Copa Barranquilla (Rivera Corado (81) and Ma again) – in this tournament she played against no other player ranking within the top 200), and she was opposed to only one top 100 in the Asuncion Bowl (Baptiste, (51)). The Banana Bowl’s draw was instead tougher, as Osorio had to face Gracheva, currently ranked over 100 but showing a best ranking of 19, Vanessa Ong who ranks in the top 100, and the (at the time) top 20 Alexa Noel: whilst the Banana Bowl was a strong Grade 1, the other 3 tournaments Osorio won were weaker than most Grades 2 and the girl was expected indeed to win them: there was too much of a gap between Osorio and the other participants. Now, the fact that Maria played so much in South America is logical and no one can say that she cherry-picks the weakest tournaments. Maria is from Columbia, and it’s obvious she plays the most important tournaments which are held in her region; it’s then absolutely fair and deserved that the young Colombian is praised for the great run she achieved as she demonstrated so much consistency, taking also in account also that the girl was born in 2002 and she is still, thus, quite a youngster on the junior circuit. But it’s also fair to highlight that a player at her level was expected to easily win most of the matches she played from January to now, and only a few of them constituted real testers. More, to say 100% the truth, in Chengdu, last year Maria won only 1 match, against Sofia Sewing, as she benefitted from a walk-over against Xinyu Wang in the round-robin, before beating her again later in the tournament by 6-4 RET: the Chinese, though, was not in a condition to play in Chengdu; she tried to, I guess, because it was the most prestigious junior event held in China.
Anyhow, in a short time tennis will transfer to Europe and between May and July, during which Santa Croce, Bonfiglio, Roland Garros, Roehampton and Wimbledon will be played, Maria Osorio Serrano will have the opportunity to confirm and even improve on the results she achieved, without the need to win further 24 matches in a row.
Let’s now turn the attention to the Porto Alegre Grade A. The player who will play the semi-final against Ana Makatsaria, the girl who put an end to Osorio’s run, is Leylah Fernandez, a Canadian born in 2002 and who currently ranks in 84th spot, but in 30th in the road to Chengdu ranking; she has beaten in the quarter-finals a very interesting girl from the U.S., Gabriella Price. Price was born in 2003 and she already is a top 70, having recently won a Gade 1 in Ecuador. It seems that this young girl may be a profile on whom it is worth to focus. The other semi-final will be played by the French Manon Leonard (90) and the Danish Clara Tauson (65).
I have already expressed my view in the quality of the Brasilian grade A in my last article: I am sorry to have to repeat that a Grade A which does not feature in the semi-finals any top 60 and that features only 5 top 50s in the entry list is to be qualified as weak. Let’s conclude by saying that, beside Osorio, who anyway reached the quarter finals, and who was forced at a point in her life to lose a match, the performance of most of the other top seeds was disappointing: second seed Maria Lourdes Carle, who is currently not experiencing a good period of form, lost in the first round: she is now out of the top 20 in the Junior ranking, after reaching a peak of 9 in November 2017: this year the Argentinian has played only 5 matches, losing three of them, two of which were first rounds. The third seed Alexa Noel who is also, lately, experiencing hard times, has lost in the second round against the semi-finalist Fernandez; whilst the third seed Rivera Corado (who ranked 99 at the end of last season, but currently ranks 35th after reaching a final and a semi-final in two Grades 1 played, respectively, in Colombia and Ecuador), also lost in the first round, beaten 6-7 1-6 by Haumuller, an Argentinian girl ranking above 250th spot. Finally, a good tournament was instead played by the 5th seed Lea Ma, who quite comfortably reached the quarterfinals, before being beaten, though harshly, by Clara Tauson: 6-3 6-0 was the final score in favour of the Danish girl.
