TENNIS EUROPE JUNIOR TOUR 25 HISTORY
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the fourth player ever to win the title on her debut WTA main draw appearance. A top 20 career high in singles would follow, though it was in doubles that Srebotnik truly excelled, taking the Wimbledon title in 2011 alongside Kveta Peschke and attaining the No 1 position that year. Elsewhere, some impressive names emerged through the 14 & Under tour this year - some making more of an impact than others. Roger Federer would become one of the greatest tennis players to have set foot on a court, but his first results on the Junior Tour were modest, with a quarter-final loss to Croatia’s Markus Kovacevic in Arezzo and a third round loss to Austria’s Markus Polessnig in Genova being his highlights. Lleyton Hewitt, on the other hand, took the Ede, Leeuwarden and Carl Gantois titles and finished ranked 10th, while Elena Dementieva was a winner at home in Moscow in April as well as in Iteuil and Ste-Genevieve. There were the first stirrings of a Belgian tennis revolution, too. Alongside the boys’ No 1 Rochus, two future greats of the game would earn top 20 positions: fourth-ranked Justine Henin, a winner in Bolton and runner-up in Tarbes, and 16th-placed Kim Clijsters, who took her
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Belgian tennis boomed in the late 1990s, and was first in evidence on the Tennis Europe Junior Tour, where Olivier Rochus, Justine Henin and Kim Clijsters all made their presence felt. home title in Hamont. Indeed, the 1995 Petits As final is poignant in retrospect: Henin’s conqueror was another teenage prodigy, Mirjana Lucic of Croatia, whose turbulent career has been marked by distressing personal troubles. It is to Lucic’s immense credit that 2015 finds her still grinding away on the WTA Tour - and being rewarded with some of the best results of her career.
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1 . A 13-year old Justine Henin (left) was amongst those on the podium at the 1996 European Junior Championships. 2 . Marat Safin showed that Russian boys could excel as much as the new generation of Russian girls. 3 . Guillermo Coria had a string of successes as a member of the ITF/COSAT Touring Team. 4 . Roger Federer with his first Tennis Europe Junior Tour trophy, in Prato.
In 1994, Belgian prodigy Justine Henin finished 39th in the 14 & Under rankings. By 1995, she had hauled herself to No 4. Her ascension to No 1 in her final year of 14 & Under competition seemed like an inevitability, and presaged one of the all-time great careers. Although a shock second-round loss to Yugoslavia’s Visnja Vuletic meant that she relinquished her Petits As title to Croatia’s Jelena Pandzic, Henin still racked up three significant singles titles - the Open des Jeunes, the Cup Carl Gantois and the Junior Championships. Pandzic, meanwhile, added trophies in Ste-Genevieve-des-Bois and Brühl to her Tarbes victory - though was beaten into second place by the consistent Katerina Basternakova, of Slovakia, whose heavier schedule paid off in ranking terms despite capturing no titles. Meanwhile, the girl who would help Henin spearhead a golden age of Belgian women’s tennis was making her mark: Kim Clijsters finished at No 4 after collecting two Serie I trophies in Genova and Arezzo. The two future rivals would only tangle again once this year, though, with Henin coming out on top in the Cup Carl Gantois final - although partnering up, they would win the doubles title at the European Championships without dropping a set. Unsurprisingly, this was a vintage year for Belgium in team competition, too: alongside Leslie Butkiewicz, Clijsters and Henin would win the Winter Cups; and, accompanied by Lore de Lille, they added the Summer Cups for good measure. 1996 was also a landmark for the Junior Tour more generally: it was the inaugural year of the Junior Masters tournament, an equivalent to the professional tours’ year-end championships to which the six best-ranked players in each category were invited to battle it out, alongside the winner and finalist of the European Championships. In Prato, Italy - where the event would be held for its first seven years - it got off to a good start, with the boys’ 14 & Under final being contested between two future top 20 players in Spain’s Tommy Robredo and France’s Paul-Henri Mathieu. Robredo beat Mathieu 62 75 and was joined in the winners’ circle by Croatia’s Jelena Pandzic (14 & Under girls), Italy’s Antonella Serra-Zanetti (16 & Under girls) and France’s Julien Jeanpierre (16 & Under boys). Indeed, the three-way rivalry between Mathieu, Robredo and Bulgaria’s Todor Enev that came to a head at the Masters had dominated the year. Enev, who finished in third place, won two smaller tournaments in Leeuwarden and Sudak - but had to be content with the runner-up trophy at four major
events. Mathieu was his conqueror in the Petits As and Genova finals; Enev avenged those losses in a tight three-setter in the Junior Championships semi-finals, only to lose the title round to Robredo, who would also be crowned champion in Ste Genevieve-des-Bois. Elsewhere, Argentina’s Guillermo Coria - the fifth-place finisher - was responsible for another Category 1 final loss for Enev in Brühl. It was the first Category 1 trophy of the year for Coria, a future Roland Garros finalist, although he captured two Category 2 titles in Paris and Ede. The previous year’s 14 & Under boys’ No 1, Belgium’s Olivier Rochus, made easy work of the step up to the 16 & Under division, with victories at the Serie 2 event in Aviles and the Serie 1 event in Le Pontet pushing him up to No 3. Masters winner Jeanpierre took second place, also taking the Hauts-de-France trophy. But it was the boy he lost to in the Serie 1 final in Torino who dominated the category in 1996. Irakli Labadze, of Georgia, played just five tournaments on
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1996
1995 American men won three of the four Grand Slams for a fourth consecutive year, but Thomas Muster claimed the Roland Garros title. 1996 USA ends a run of three successive Fed Cup titles for Spain by routing the defending champions 5-0 in the final. 1997 Three years on from being crowned the youngest ever European 18 & Under champion, Martina Hingis wins three of the four Grand Slam singles titles. Aged just 15, Mirjana Lucic becomes the fifth youngest player ever to win a WTA title, in Bol. 1998 Four years after winning the European 18 & Under Championships, Carlos Moyá conquers Roland Garros.
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