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Int. German U14 Tennis Nationals – Girls Singles Final: V. Cesonyte (GER) – Anastasia Nikolaieva (UKR) 7-6(1) 6-3

Florian Buechting Sports Reports No Comments

On 3rd August 2024, I headed to Düren, some 50 kilometers West of Cologne. My aim was to cover the final matches of the Internationale Deutsche Tennismeisterschaft U14, the International German Under 14 Tennis Nationals. Originally, I hoped to cover a few matches of Indian players there, but those failed to pass the first rounds, before I had time to coordinate that with my work. Thus, I just concentrated on the final day at the TG RW Düren grounds. The first match of the day was the Girls Singles final, featuring German Viktorija Cesonyte and Ukrainian Anastasia Nikolaieva.

This posting comes with 315 major size pictures in a dedicated event section of the sports gallery.

 

 

Int. German U14 Tennis Nationals – Girls Singles Final – Match Report

Cesonyte, who recently still played for her country of birth, Lithuania, was the top-seed of the tournament.. However, if you haven’t seen her playing before, her style surprised quite a lot of spectators. In a vast majority, she played high and slow top-spin balls, which reminded of the legendary 1989 Michael Chang vs. Ivan Lendl French Open match. However, Chang was the underdog and Lendl struggled. The roles were vice versa in Düren – and the nominal underdog struggled in here. Nikolaieva played more aggressive, more powerful, but in most of the rallies, this felt like completely wasted energy. Cesonyte played extremely reliable, long balls and also showed a high athletics level and returned even more difficult balls.

The Ukrainian struggled a lot with that, especially in the beginning of the first set. It took her quite a while to somehow adopt to it. Finally, Nikolaieva was 5-4 in the lead at own serve, but another epic game followed. Rallies with 20, 30 shots were not rare on this day in Düren – and Cesonyte simply played her game. Even in this pressure situation, she was patient and extremely steady and finally managed to break again. The match went into tie-break, which then went surprisingly fast. The Ukrainian committed too many mistakes and just made one point. After 94 minutes (!), the first set was in the  books. Bad luck especially for the organizers, who had an extremely tight schedule for the final day after an almost rained-out Thursday.

 

Cesonyte’s Reliability against Nikolaieva’s Power – Part II

The second set had a similar story. However, Cesonyte’s high balls became shorter, often dropped around the T-line. However, you could see that her opponent struggled to attack against these balls, maybe fearing to run into a lob shot. The first four games of the set almost took thirty minutes. In the fifth game, Nikolaieva first saved two break points but than faced another one and the game advantage was back to the German. She mentally felt not being able to go for that tennis battle of patience and lost her following service game as well, so that Cesonyte served for the match at a second set score of 5-2. In the next two games, the servers were broken each again, so that finally, Cesonyte won the 2:47 hour battle (imagine this would have been a three-setter…) 7-6(1) 6-3.

 

Int. German U14 Tennis Nationals – Girls Singles Final – The Gallery

In the 2024 German International U14 Tennis Nationals  section of my sports gallery, there is a designated major size picture gallery with 315 pictures of the match at

 

Int. German U14 Tennis Nationals – Girls Singles Final – My View of the Match

Even though I cannot say that I liked the style of the German-Lithuanian player, her steadiness and mental strength in this match was impressing. Even with some struggles late in the first and at some early parts of the second set, she relied on her game plan – and also profited from hesitant style of her opponent. I loved the energetic style of the Ukrainian, who, however, felt to invest too much. Too many sharp shots were simply neutralized by a high ball of the German. You need to step out of your sportive comfort zone in this situation, play more stops, attack on the net and increase pressure, so that your opponent cannot reposition easily all the time. Thus, Cesonyte showed the more complete – and striking – set of tennis skills on that Saturday noon match.

 

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