Youth is served at Manitoba Open

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This article was published 15/08/2021 (1758 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The tennis gods smiled on young Manitobans over the weekend as a pair of local teenagers won the men’s and women’s events to wrap up the Manitoba Open.

In the women’s WS Open bracket, Aurora Ling, who entered the tournament as the second seed, did not disappoint family and friends in attendance, as the 14 year old won all four of her matches on the week. Ling capped the tournament with a sturdy Sunday performance, defeating No. 1 seed Jeslyn Peng, in straight sets, 6-1, 6-3.

“It’s a great feeling to win and I know there were a couple of close matches, I’m glad I got through it,” said Ling.

“This might’ve been the best I played in the whole tournament.”

Ling’s perfect 4-0 record gave her the edge in points in the bracket over Andrea Camelia Oros, her closest competitor, who went 3-1 in the event. On Thursday, Ling’s toughest opponent was Oros, as Ling narrowly defeated her 7-6 (5), 7-5. The women ran into weather delays that Ling noted were detrimental at first to her focus to begin her week.

“Especially after the rain delay in my very first match, it kind of cutoff my momentum at the end of the first half, but I’m happy that the next day I didn’t start off too slow and I was able to win that set,” said Ling.

Out of her perfect four day total against the other four women in the bracket, Ling won her total games by 50-17 and never surrendered a set to any of her opponents. Ling noted her consistent forehand helped her play some of her best tennis this year and a victory from the Alberta Open sparked a great week back at home.

“I feel like my biggest takeaway was that I definitely improved since the last tournament I played,” said Ling.

“I definitely got a lot of confidence from that tournament because I was over there training with a good coach and she cleaned up my strokes a bit and got me to think about tactics rather than just blasting one off the court.”

In the men’s MS Open bracket, Volodymyr Gurenko entered the tournament with confidence despite being only 13 years of age.

In the 32-man draw, Gurenko would defeat the likes of No. 6 seed Beejay Groce, No. 3 Edmund Elvin Kizito and top seed Jaskaran Singh Grewal. In Saturday’s final, Gurenko faced his toughest challenge in Noah Pe, who also made the final as a junior. The two put on a very entertaining match with Gurenko prevailing in straight sets, 6-4, 6-3.

“I decided to beat everyone and that’s it,” said Gurenko.

“It was hard, but I did it and I’m excited to have won.”

Gurenko, who wasn’t intimidated by the competition, posted a 60-12 games won/lost mark and didn’t surrender a set in his perfect 5-0 performance. The 13 year old says he is excited to head to Saskatoon in a few days to compete in the Prairie Region Outdoor Qualifier open to Manitoba and Saskatchewan athletes.

“If I beat everyone there, then I will play in Nationals,” said Gurenko.

Both Gurenko and Ling have noticed there is an increasing interest at the youth level to compete in adult tournaments. Ling says competition in events like the Manitoba Open is expanding, with younger players competing at a high level and winning events.

“There are a lot of juniors in this tournament, the guy who won the men’s open is really good,” said Ling.

“I feel like he’ll go far in tennis if he keeps playing. I feel like the number of players might pave a new path for junior tennis in Manitoba.”

Ling says she would realistically like to reach Division I in college and dreams of one day playing in a grand slam tournament.

jbernacki@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @JosephBernacki