The tennis has stopped for a bit because of the coronavirus spread, but in this piece below we look at five, young women’s players to watch out once it resumes.
Since Serena Williams’ break from tennis after winning the 2017 Australian Open, women’s tennis has thrown up different Grand Slam winners. A total of 10 different players have won Grand Slam titles and only two of them have won it more than once in this same period.
This unpredictability in women’s tennis makes it exciting to follow, and it also makes us look at who could be the next Grand Slam winner, whenever competitive sport, and tennis, resumes.
Karolína Muchová
Karolína Muchová is from the Czech Republic and first became a name in the tennis world during the 2018 US Open, when she beat the world’s number 12 player, Garbiñe Muguruza, who had already won two major tournaments.
Muchová went on the following year to beat Karolína Plíšková, in the quarter finals of Wimbledon 2019.
The Czech made her tennis debut in 2017 at the Korea Open, clinching a spot when she won her qualifying matches against Lee So-r and Anna Morgina. 2018 was when she debuted at the US Open Grand Slam, with a win of three qualifying matches. And as mentioned above, it was this Grand Slam when she beat Garbiñe Muguruza,
At the moment, 2020, she is ranked at number 26, is 23 years old and is a definite name to watch out for. She has so far earned a prize money of USD 1.4 million and comes from a sporting family with her dad being the Czech footballer Josef Mucha.
Karolína Muchová plays a smart game of tennis and is known not only for her very strong groundstrokes but also her sliced strokes, her drop shots and her soft shots, i.e. she has a variety which could test the best.
Her first WTA title came in Seoul last year and she could add a few more in the months to follow the resumption.
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Dayana Yastremska
Dayana Oleksandrívna Yastremska is another young female tennis player to look out for. She is a Ukrainian professional player and is ranked number 25 in the world.
She is currently the second-highest ranked teenager and has won three World Tennis Association titles in just four finals. Yastremska is just 19 years old and she is the second-highest ranked teenager, ranking just behind tennis player Bianca Andreescu.
As a junior singles and doubles Grand Slam runner up, Yastremska broke quite quickly on to the WTA Tour. It was only last year at the age of 18 that she made it into the top 100, winning two titles as a teenager, one of which included the 2018 Hong Kong Tennis Open. She went on to add the Hua Hin title and the Strasbourg Open win last year and was a finalist at the Adelaide International earlier this year.
Last year was good for her, where she rose up the ladder, making her way fro number 58 at the start of the season to 22 by the end. Today she is at 25.
Yastremska is known to be an aggressive player, leading the WTA Tour with the highest amount of shots that ended in winning shots, unforced errors or opponents forced errors.
Amanda Anisimova
Amanda Anisimova is an American tennis player who is just 18. She won her first World Tennis Association title last year, at the Copa Colsanitas tournament.
She is also the second youngest player ranked in the top 100 players. She certainly has what it takes to be a star, not just physically but also emotionally. She’s confident, a bit of an Instagram star, knows how to play the game and also how to play to a crowd. Her talent is extraordinary and we think we’re going to see Amanda climb the ladder, fairly quickly.
Amanda Anisimova’s coach, her dad, the late Konstantin Anisimova, had introduced her and her sister to tennis at a very young age. She had to withdraw from the US Open last year as a result of his untimely demise.
At the junior level, Amanda was ranked number two and won the 2017 US Junior Open, and was the first American in fourteen years to reach the singles finals at the French Open.
Before the age of 15, Anisimova defeated a top 150 opponent and within a year, had won her first ITF professional title. As said above, people started talking about her when she won the 2018 Copa Colsanitas, and then last year when she upset Aryna Sabalenka at the Australian Open (number 11) and Simona Halep (world number three) at the French Open, going on to reach the semi-finals.
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Marketa Vondrousova
Marketa Vondroušová is just 20 years old, from the Czech Republic and her career high is being at number 14 in the WTA. She was the runner up at the 2019 French Open and the first teenager to be a Grand Slam finalist since Caroline Wozniacki, ten years earlier. Marketa is currently number sitting at number 19.
Vondrousova has won one WTA singles title in a total of four titles, was ranked number one in the Junior WTA, and won two Junior Grand Slam doubles titles.
She had a speedy breakthrough on the WTA Tour, when at the age of 17 she won the 2017 Ladies Open Biel Bienne, only her second WTA singles event. It was this win that helped her reach the top one hundred WTA ranking at the tender age of 17.
Last year saw her with plagued with injury, putting her out of tennis for the last six months of 2019. She’s nonetheless tagged as one of the young women to watch out for, in the WTA.
Anett Kontaveit
Anett Kontaveit is an Estonian professional tennis player who has already won one singles title on the WTA Tour. On the ITF circuit she has 11 singles titles and 5 doubles titles under her tennis belt.
Anett reached the 2019 Miami Open semi-final as well as the final of the 2018 Wuhan Open. She is just 24 years old, but has been winning championships since the age of 15, winning the Estonian Championships in 2009 and 2010.
Kontaveit started playing tennis at the age of six with her mom as her coach. She was a multi-talented youngster, enjoying singing and dancing too, but chose tennis. She is currently ranked number 22, although has been at number 14, and for doubles is ranked 103.
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