The second comeback of the Russian in one day! Guryeva, 18, won the first junior TBS of her career.
Sofia Kolodkina September 10, 2023, 07:45 Moscow time Audio version: Your browser does not support the audio element.
Anastasia competed for her Slam debut a few hours after the semi-final. Yaroslav Demin was eliminated in the round of 16.
Six Russians reached the American Junior Major: Yaroslav Demin, Danil Panarin, Anastasia Guryeva, Alisa Oktyabreva, Kristina Sidorova, Ekaterina Perelygina. There was no one left in the women’s and men’s individual draws after the quarterfinals. Demin, the top seed of the pair, had a chance to hold on to the title, but he and Pacheco Méndez lost in the semifinals. Guryeva, seeded eighth, climbed to the top of the junior draw and, in a duet with the Romanian, a couple of hours after the semi-final, she achieved another hat trick, and she did it! This is Nastya’s TBS debut.
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The road there proved incredibly difficult: the final doubles matches were played in one day, as they were regularly postponed to later the day before due to bad weather, and the juniors usually play on the outskirts of Flushing Meadows: the courts No 10 and 15 have no roof or canopies, and the central arenas are occupied by older colleagues. Therefore, the youth players have to languish before their matches. In one of them, the Russian Guryeva fought for the first “Slam” together with the Romanian Mara Gae.
In the quarterfinals they defeated the American duo Tatum Evans and Alanis Hamilton. They fought against Japanese athletes Hayu Kinoshita and Wakana Sonobe to reach the finals. And an hour later the set and the break flew by.
At first, the girls could not offer anything to the agile Japanese tennis players. They actively moved around the court, blocking balls into the net, while the main weapon of the Russians and Romanians, their power serve, worked worse than their rivals: with 76% of hits with the first ball, they won the 63%, and Gae gave away net rallies again and again. Without a strong fight and relying on their own errors (seven unforced against two of the Japanese), the girls lost the first set with two breaks, 6:2.
In the second game, Kinoshita and Sonobe led twice and then gave up their serves twice: each time, as if they sensed an advantage on the break, they conceded a little and a relaxed smile appeared on their faces. It was then that the reception of the Russian and Romanian teams increased: 14 out of 19 goals (74%), the first was cut, the opponents stopped playing perfectly and errors began to fall; several tactically incorrect plays were enough to get a break and a set – 6:3. Guryeva and Gae already won 68% of the moves in the first, compared to 43% of their rivals; The Japanese also sunk due to errors: 7-4.
In the decisive tiebreak the girls crushed their rivals on serve, regularly leading by three goals and maintained their lead until the end – 10:7.
Demin stopped one step away from the third consecutive final
Yaroslav Demin
Photo: Clive Brunskill/Getty Images
On the nearby court, it was a shame that 18-year-old Demin lost his match, the end of which was seen much more clearly than his compatriots next door. On the contrary, he was leading the set and the break, but lost concentration and failed in the second half of the match. What is especially offensive: after winning the Grand Slam tournament in France with the Mexican Pacheco Mendes and a joint title in Milan, he played the singles title match at Wimbledon, where he lost to local tennis player Henry Searle. At the US Open, he could qualify for a third consecutive TBS final, confirming his number one status. But the top seeds lost to the No. 6 duo of Italian Federico Bondioli and Austrian Joel Schwarzler.
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The last Russian in the ITF draw number 18, Guryeva has never made it this far in TBS: the 1/16 finals in New York a year ago and the semifinals of “RG” 2023, which she lost to the Peruvian Lussiana. Pérez-Alarcón and deprived the fans of a purely Russian final: Alina Korneeva was waiting in another part of the grid. Guryeva considers that match to be the most offensive of her career and she admits that she would like to play it again. She “she really wanted to reach the final of the Junior Slam and win it. Winning the Slam is very valuable, it is like the soccer World Cup. But then I was very tired. I gave everything, but it was not enough,” she said in an interview with Sport Express.
After moving to the academy in Antalya, the results improved: he works carefully with local coaches on his service and physics. “Since I moved, I still have two personal fitness training sessions every day. This is very difficult, but I understand that to achieve my goals I need to improve my physical condition. That’s why I work calmly.
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Apparently, physics helped make two two-hour matches happen in one day. By conceding a set and a break, it seemed that final rivals Sara Saito and Nanako Sato seemed fresher and lighter; sometimes they made fantastic forehand plays down the hall. The girls laughed and talked about boxing as if it were not the TBS final, but the first round of ITF 25: the atmosphere of the match was very relaxed and festive. Which, however, corresponded to the general atmosphere of Friday in the United States: screams and shouts reached the tenth court of the Arthur Ashe stadium, where the local favorite Coco Gauff, 19, had just completed her final, beating Aryna there Sabalenka and becoming the TBS. champion for the first time. Like Coco, Anastasia did not miss the opportunity to get the first TBS of her career: the junior! After the key break at the end, the match reached the championship tie-break, where the Russians and Romanians managed to turn the almost lost lead into a 10:8 victory.
