junior tennis

Lauren Smyczek: Growing up with ATP tennis player and brother, Tim

January 15, 2013 by Lauren Smyczek

Lauren Smyczek is the newest contributor to Tennis Grandstand, and the younger sister of current ATP pro, Tim Smyczek who is playing at the Australian Open this week. You can follow her on Twitter @LaurenSmyczek where she talks tennis, fashion and life.

By Lauren Smyczek

For years, the Smyczek children, Alec, Tim and I, left the house at five in the morning for my older brothers’ tennis practice before school. I usually ate a donut on the couch while they hustled, but on a good day I would serve a bucket of balls or hit against the wall.

Tim Lauren and Alec Smyczek — Alec, Lauren and Tim Smyczek (L to R)

Growing up in Wisconsin, we didn’t take family vacations because most weekends were spent training or road-tripping to various USTA tournaments. Consequently, most of my earliest memories take place on or near a tennis court.
Tim, now 25 and three years my elder, excelled through the junior circuit and currently plays on the ATP Tour, reaching his career-high ranking of 125 just this week. He is in Melbourne for the Australian Open and just defeated Ivo Karlovic to reach the second round – a feat our entire family is very proud of.
So, what was it like growing up with a brother who would go on to play professional tennis on the ATP tour?
The training and travel were grueling, intense and challenging, but I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Jealousy never entered the picture in our family. If you knew Tim at all or had ever seen him pick up a racquet, you saw how much he loved tennis. Seeing how he literally never wanted to put his racquet down as a kid, you couldn’t help but want him to succeed.
I, however, had a very different experience with the sport from my brother. Early on, I just never felt the love and commitment Tim felt for tennis, so it began to be more of a burden than anything. It wasn’t until my college years that I realized just how much tennis meant to me.

By the time I was in middle school, Tim had already started traveling to tournaments and training with his coach almost every weekend. By that point, it was pretty clear to me that I couldn’t force the tennis thing anymore — my heart was elsewhere.
Around age 11 or 12, I realized that I enjoyed wearing the tennis skirts and cool shoes more than actually competing. Unlike Tim, I didn’t have that fight in me once I stepped on the court. He had won the state championship as a freshman and thus decided to begin playing tournaments rather than participating on the school team. As a result and due to my own work ethic, I put a lot of pressure on myself to excel as well, but this made tennis difficult for me to enjoy at times.
Then one day, I finally realized that I didn’t have to do absolutely everything that my older brothers did — so I ventured into doing theater to explore other activities. My tennis-driven family was not into theater much so their initial failure to understand why I would choose acting and singing over working harder at tennis for a shot at a college scholarship didn’t surprise me. However, being a close-knit family, they quickly supported my decision.
Rather than running away from a sport I had been surrounded with all my life, I decided to keep up with it in high school in order to be a better-rounded student. It may not have been my favorite high school experience but I believe I got through those years of playing and training thanks in part to my wonderful teammates, fantastic coaches, and other diversions in the form of multiple high school musical performances.
When I headed off to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a transformation I wasn’t expecting occurred.
Once I left high school, a huge weight had been lifted in regards to tennis. The sport became something I now chose to pursue. Whether it was growing up in a tennis family, or playing alongside someone as successful as my brother, I was always my own worst enemy growing up when I didn’t perform how I wanted to on court. All of a sudden in college, my desire to play was rekindled when the pressures drifted away and I began enjoying it more than I ever anticipated.
I arranged hitting time with friends because I wanted to get better and to have fun with it. For me, finally being able to enjoy playing tennis was all about perspective. I got involved with the club tennis team at UW and loved it so much that I started running it my sophomore year. I had such a great experience my freshman year that I almost felt it a responsibility to give back and try to provide the same caliber of experience for the new players. I met so many wonderful people and have such fond memories from the club team.
Tennis now means more to me than my 12-year-old self could ever comprehend. And here’s the cliché, though very true: it is a healthy pastime I’ll treasure for the rest of my life.
From all those years on court as a kid, to my involvement during my early adulthood, I can firmly say that playing tennis has helped form me into the person I am. And what’s more, the sport allows us to create an instant, universal bond with others.
And what can be more enjoyable than stepping on court with your family and friends for a fun hit? Nothing, I say.

Donna Vekic: All grown up and searching for her tennis destiny

September 19, 2012 by TennisGrandstand

By David Kane

Sometimes on the Sony Ericsson WTA Tennis Tour, fans find that their favorite rising stars really grow up fast. One minute, they’re teenagers struggling to qualify for major tournaments; the next, they’re making tour finals in countries like Uzbekistan and you’re left wondering where the time went.
Such is the case for the young 16-year-old Croatian, Donna Vekic. If you have never heard of her, fear not. Although she has competed on the junior circuit, the descriptors “prodigy” or “junior champion” are withheld because, to be fair, her junior results have been quite middling in a division where success and failure is simply foreshadowing.
Before this summer, I had only known of Vekic in passing as the player against whom controversial fireball Yulia Putintseva had audibly and turbulently fought back at during the 2011 Junior Wimbledon.
Despite Vekic’s relative anonymity, when I posited to my twitter followers which players I should be on the lookout for during the US Open qualies, many were quick to point me towards the promising talent.
When I got to Court 6, I could see why; the tall blonde in the flowing Nike dress cut an impressive figure for a 16-year-old. While most of the top junior girls look like girls, Vekic already looked the part of a woman looking to break through on the woman’s tour. More importantly, she played like a woman; with a big serve and equally ferocious groundstrokes, this ready-for-primetime player looked decidedly out of place on such a small outer court.
Unseeded in qualifying, the Croat had a good week in Flushing before her age and inexperience reared at a most unfortunate time; two games from the US Open main draw, Vekic wilted in the New York heat and veteran Edina Gallovits-Hall took care of the rest, winning the last 10 games and making the youngster look out of place all over again.
What could have been a disappointing end became that crucially aforementioned foreshadowing when she arrived in Tashkent a week later, again as a qualifier. In seven matches, she only dropped one set, and claimed decisive victories against No. 4 seed Magdelena Rybarikova and No. 6 seed Bojana Jovanovski en route to her first WTA tour final. Despite losing to Caroline Wozniacki’s US Open conqueror Irina Camelia Begu at week’s end, Donna Vekic had arrived, in fairly emphatic style given the dearth of prior results pointing to said arrival. It just over one year, Vekic has risen over 700 ranking spots and hit a career-high No. 121 this past Monday.
Given how past players have made the junior to WTA transition over the last few years, Vekic’s run has many scratching their heads. Junior results aren’t a fluke; a look at the last 10 US Open girls’ singles champions reads like a “Who’s Who” of the WTA (both today and tomorrow). Her talent cannot be denied, and the main (albeit bizarre) question that seems to be at hand is how Vekic’s WTA-friendly game failed to translate in the junior ranks.
One need only look to the Williams sisters for the answer; the two had abstained entirely from junior tournaments and their father had been heavily criticized at the time for doing so. Venus turned pro the year Meilin Tu won the girls’ US Open, and Tara Snyder the next when Serena entered the pro ranks. With that perspective, suddenly an aberration looks like destiny.
Follow Donna Vekic on Facebook or Twitter for her WTA Tour updates!

American junior Samantha Crawford charges to her first Slam title at U.S. Open

September 9, 2012 by TennisGrandstand

By David Kane, Special for Tennis Grandstand

Tennis has a way of giving its fans an eerie sense of symmetry.
Why else would I find myself watching Samantha Crawford play for the US Open girls’ singles title nearly two weeks after watching her on the same court in women’s qualifying. That day, I had had no idea who Crawford was, and viewed her only as a stepping-stone for another established junior, Irina Khromacheva, to make her foray up and into the senior level.
Tennis also has a way of punishing fans that don’t do their homework.
Far from a pushover, the 17-year-old Georgia native clad in Nike and armed with an orange Wilson racquet, clocks the ball as hard and flat as another former US Open girls’ champion, Lindsay Davenport. And Crawford stood her ground as she played the final junior Slam of 2012 like a big fish in a small pond.
After qualifying for the senior main draw (with wins over Khromacheva and former top 20 player Eleni Daniilidou) and pushing giant killer Laura Robson in the first round, Crawford entered the junior tournament unseeded and relatively under the radar amidst a field of more celebrated junior prospects like compatriot Taylor Townsend and Yulia Putintseva. Free from pressure, the American made light work of her unseeded opponents and eeked out tight three-setters against higher ranked opponents like Sachia Vickery.
She didn’t have to play the feisty Putintseva, who withdrew from their quarterfinal clash with a rumored heart problem. But after seeing her trounce Khromacheva and Estonia’s Anett Kontaveti in the girls’ final today, I’m willing to argue that Crawford would have emerged victorious from that encounter as well. While many of the higher ranked juniors are undersized baseliners, Crawford is tall (6’2” to be exact) and has an effortlessly powerless serve that makes her appear light-years ahead of her similarly aged opponents who struggle on their second – and even their first – delivery.
Against Kontaveit, she started on the back foot, failing to put enough first serves in and falling too far behind the baseline, allowing the Estonian, who hits hard enough on both sides to be called a baby Kaia Kanepi, to dictate from the onset. But just like against Khromacheva, the young American began to find her range and once she did, the match was all but over. The Estonian has had a solid year at the junior Slams and a win over Townsend this week to be proud of, but she didn’t serve even half as well as her opponent, failing to consolidate a single break or 30-15 point on her racquet.
Crawford meanwhile, got better and better as the first set wore on, looking visibly giddy as she clocked short balls into the corner and converted her first opportunity to take the opening set. Nerve-free, she never looked back as she broke several more times to take the match in straight sets. The giggles and bubbly personality shone through during the trophy ceremony; Crawford barely got any words out and only provided nervous laughter as explanation for three weeks of utterly serious tennis.
For all the high-profile stories involving the next generation of WTA superstars, Crawford’s spectacularly underrated showing may prove to be a springboard that will have her laughing last for years to come.
David Kane is an avid tennis fan reporting from the grounds of the U.S. Open. You can follow him on Twitter @ovafanboy.

Top Junior Tennis Academies Set to Compete in Inaugural Prince Plugged In World Championships

April 29, 2008 by Erwin Ong

Kids and Coaches Head to Rome, Italy for Once In a Lifetime Opportunity
Bordentown, NJ – April 29, 2008 — The stage is set. Country champions have been crowned and now, for the first time ever, top junior tennis academies from six nations are on their way to Rome, Italy to determine which academy is the best of the best.
In four years, the ground-breaking Prince Plugged In (PPI) program has revolutionized junior competition, training and education and online interaction, by connecting nearly fifty of the world’s most elite high-performance tennis academies.
Coaches and players who have been accepted into the PPI program share revolutionary training tips, equipment insights, match-play strategies, and engage in a year-long series of team competitions called Challenge Cups -– designed to help players reach their full potential. It is at these Challenge Cup events where academies battle one another to accrue points which ultimately determine the top academy in each country.
According to legendary tennis coach Nick Bollettieri, whose IMG/Bollettieri Academy plugged into the PPI network, “The format is incredible. These coaches are more than just teaching their students how to hit the ball — they are teaching them crucial on-court strategies, the importance of sportsmanship and how to compete and win. A program and format like PPI is one of the most powerful tools we have to reach out to tennis coaches and students worldwide. By connecting academy students and coaches around the world, we are promoting the sport, facilitating the abilities of potentially great players and cultivating the next great champion in the process.”
The PPI World Championships will take place May 2 through 6 bringing together national winners from five countries for an opportunity and experience like nothing else in junior tennis. Aside from the team competition, Prince has arranged for special guest speakers and training sessions for the kids, trips to Rome’s historic sites and tickets to the Italian Open where the academies will sit courtside and get to meet players. Overall, Prince is bringing more than 60 kids and coaches to Italy for the event.
Academies competing for the PPI World Title are:

United States winner: T Bar M Academy, Dallas, Texas
Spain winner: Tenis Val, Valencia, Spain
Italian winner: Club Sant’ Agnese, Rome, Italy
United Kingdom winner: Totally Tennis, Basingstroke, England
Russian winner: Club Sochi, Sochi, Russia
United States Runner Up: IMG/Bollettieri Academy, Bradenton, Florida

“It is amazing to think about how fast and far this program has grown in four years,” said Ken Merritt, Director of Teaching Programs at Prince. “We have some of the best junior players in the world competing on behalf of their academy and their country. In a few days, kids from across the globe will converge on the red clay of Rome for a true, once-in-a-lifetime tennis experience. While they come from different places and speak different languages, their experience with PPI has been the same and this is a chance for the players and the academies to measure themselves against players from other parts of the world.”
In fact, the opportunity is so unique that one academy, IMG/Bollettieri, decided to make the trip to Rome, even though they were not champions in their respective country, and would need to pay their own way. Once on site, all transportation, meals, tickets and other logistics is handled by Prince and the team of volunteers at the host academy – Sant’ Agnese. For many, if not all, of the kids (especially those from the United States) this will be their first trip to Italy and to add to the overall experience, all of the kids will stay with Italian host families.
Unlike anything else available to top junior players, the PPI format is built on a team concept (something most kids do not experience in top-level junior tennis). Like all PPI Challenge Cup events, the World Championships will be a round-robin format allowing each academy and every age group, the chance to play against every other academy in a series of dual matches. Each dual match will consist of four age groups (18U, 16U, 14U, 12U), boys and girls, competing in singles. In addition, boys and girls doubles matches will consist of a 12U player teaming up with a 14U teammate and a 16U playing with an 18U teammate. This allows the younger players the chance to play up an age level which, in turn, contributes to their growth as a player. If a match is tied 3-3 after singles and doubles, a mixed-doubles super tiebreaker is be played – with the team that reached 3 first choosing which age groups will play. On-court coaching is allowed. Each dual match will begin with an introduction ceremony, a small gift exchange between the academies, and a team cheer. In the end, the team that accrues the most points in the dual matches will be crowned PPI World Champion.
“We are extremely proud of this program and want to thank the coaches and academy directors around the world who have embraced it and made it a success. The goal of PPI is to bring together like-minded academies, focused on improving their players’ game and providing them the format and tools to do so,” said George Napier, Chairman and CEO of Prince Sports, Inc. “This inaugural World Championship is the culmination of four years of hard work, and Prince’s continued commitment to junior players and we look forward to watching academy names get added to the PPI World Championship trophy for years to come.”