In my last article, I announced that I would have taken a bit of a holiday as I covered, hopefully quite well, the Australian Open, mostly speaking on how young girls performed in the pro event. I managed also to give a few hints on new junior interesting prospects; but I didn’t write really anything on the girls’ junior event: after the 1st round I just quitted following. A main reason of this was that I focused on the outstanding results of Italian boys: Musetti, of course, but also Zeppieri performed superbly well: though, Paolo was covering all this, and there was no particular reason for me to write some more on the two Italians.
But there was another and more important reason for which I didn’t follow the girls’ event: as I kind of foreseen nearly one year ago, the girls’ tour has become very predictable and, as a consequence, boring as, currently, the only top notch player left on the girls’ junior tour is Clara Tauson.
At the beginning of last season I was wondering if the young and the time inexpert, but very talented, Clara could fill the hole left by the exit from the junior tour of many of the best girls born in 2000, 2001 and 2002. At the end of 2018, further top notch players have left the junior tour, such as the two Wang, Clara Burel and Iga Swiatek. Even Cori Gauff, a girl born in 2004, has announced her intention to completely dedicate herself to the pro tour. If one reads the current junior ranking, which of course already takes in account the result of the first Master event and of the Traralgon Grade 1, he would notice that at least 6, or maybe 7, of the top 10 ranked girls will not play on the junior tour this year. Fernandez and Zheng are the only two top 10s (beside Tauson, hopefully) who are expected to play more than three tournaments until the end of the season.
The consequence of the above is that Clara has no more rivals to play against.
Recently, Clara has played in Fed Cup against Iga Swiatek, currently holding the 140th spot in the WTA ranking and on whom I have written so many times. Clara has lost with the score of 3-6 6-7(7): who else, currently playing on the junior tour, could force Iga to a tiebreak? My answer is: no one. Not even Fernandez or Zheng.
I think the results up to now demonstrate my argument: to win the Australian Open, Clara has lost 1 set, against Berezov. In the other rounds, she has lost no more than 7 games per match and she has easily disposed, in the final, of her main rival, the Canadian Fernandez, by 6-4 6-3. The same considerations apply to the Traralgon Grade 1: again, 1 set lost in the whole tournament, 5 or 6 games lost in the other matches, Fernandez defeated in the final, leaving her only 5 games overall. Let’s now switch to Fernandez’ results in this early part of 2019. Beside the losses against Clara Tauson, in the 10 matches she has played up to now (in Traralgon and Melbourne), Fernandez has lost 1 set overall, against Bencheikh; in each of all her other matches except for two, she has lost in aggregate 5 games or less. It seems that most of Fernandez’ rivals were not a serious challenge to her; on her turn, though, she was not, in both occasions, a serious challenge to Tauson.
Judging from the above, the answer to the article I mentioned before is: “no; Clara didn’t manage to fill the hole”. But this was not due to of Clara’s fault: she indeed was able to meet the expectations as to become n.1 of the junior ITF ranking; one can’t do much better than this. The only issue is that Clara, currently, seems to have no serious challengers to her domain: she has established an undisputed kingdom. No girl born in 2001 or 2002 seems to be able to oppose some resilience; only Daria Lopatetska, born in 2003 can be, in light of her recent results on the pro-tour, a serious opponent. Thus, or Clara decides to beat herself, or chances she does not reach the final in each of the tournaments she will play on the junior tour are slim. One could even turn to interesting prospects born in 2004: I have already spotted some (such as Gibson and Berezov); on some others, I want to write on in the near future (such as Diana Shnaider). Though, of course, a defeat of Clara against such young and unexperienced girls would be a real upset.
It seems that the win of this season’s most important tournament will be a matter reserved to 1 player – Tauson – or 2 players – Tauson and Lopatetska -. Given the predictable boredom in top notch tournaments, I think that the current season is to be dedicated to find the best players, who will fight to lead in 2020. My next piece will expand on this.
