Megan was on fire today. Sevil showed glimpses of why she's been following 12U domestic tournaments this year, with some impressive counter punching early on, but Megan was relentless.
I must say it's quite strange watching two small 12U girls walk on court and then proceed to wallop the ball.
Yes both Ingrid and Megan are 2011 born according to their LTA profiles. Ingrid's match and the two under 12 finals are on this YouTube stream, and should be easy to find on the LTA channel subsequently
Finals
U11 Boys: Samuel De Lange d. Leon Bekker 3-6 6-4 6-4 U11 Girls: Ingrid Dumitru d. Yanziye Zhang 6-3 7-5 U12 Boys: Niall Pickerd-Barua d. Aran Selvaarasan 3-6 6-2 6-4 U12 Girls: Megan Knight d. Sevil Parviz 6-2 6-1
Top seed Mark Ceban lost in the quarter-finals of the under 14s, but the other two members of the European Summer Cups squad made it through to the semis. Similarly in the girls top seed Arabella Loftus lost out to Sophie Bekker. The semis are on the two streamed courts, starting with the girls at 10am
U14 Boys SF
Oliver Page v Kouros Anssarizadeh
Jesse Clarkson v Liam Channon
U14 Girls SF
Sophie Bekker v Tegan Bush
Eloise Newberry v Sophie Kovacheva
Not impressed with either, though just my opinion.
A LOT of really poor errors, due to bad footwork, lack of dynamism, all-arm-no-leg, etc. etc.
I saw little of the match so didn't comment in case I had just tuned in at the wrong time - it seems that my similar perception was in fact justified unfortunately. Eloise completed a 7-6(4) 6-0 win in the other match.
I didn't see any of the other match, and only about 15 mins of this one
But the bit I saw of the match below was a good, honest match
Oliver is still 'little boy' in terms of physique (in fact I wondered if he's the son of our forum member, but I'm not asking, it's private, and I'm sure there are other younger looking lads there too)
But, given his size, Oliver played a very good dynamic game, jumped backhands taking the ball early on the top of the bounce, rather Grosjean-like, used his angles well.... And Kouros played quite a nice game too
As expected, given the semis, the girls' Final was won by Eloise Newberry
U14 Girls' FINAL: Eloise Newberry def Tegan Bush 6-3 6-4
Eloise was by far the more aggressive player, more weight of shot, a far better serve (Tegan has major issues on her serve); she obviously made quite a lot of UEs, given her style of game, but quite a lot were 'good' UEs, the right shot and not missing by much. She could do with working on her movement a bit but, overall, well deserved.
Liam Channon is the under 14 boys champion. The standard of the bits i saw was high (a very competitive first set tiebreak, where both had chances, and the latter stages of the third set, when Liam was playing with great confidence). Quite a size difference between the two (Oli similar to Ben Gusic Wan at that age, whereas Liam is closer to Mark Ceban)