British Exiles Come Up Short In Aussie Juniors
26th January 2005British hopes of scoring junior success for the second successive Grand Slam rested with two young exiles and came up short as Francesca Kinsella only made it to the second round of the Australian Open girls singles and Myles Blake did not even make through one round of the boys.
After enjoying Andy Murray’s success at last September’s US Open, the Lawn Tennis Association chose not to send any of their promising youngsters to Melbourne.
Murray reasoned playing a series of Challenger events against adult opposition in South America would be more profitable so it was left to independently funded Kinsella and Myles to fly the flag.
Kinsella, Lancashire born but based in the United States for the last two years, progressed successfully through qualifying with wins over a couple of Australian girls.
The 17 year-old guaranteed her current ITF combined junior ranking of 323 in the world will improve when she scored a 4-6, 6-3, 6-0 first round win over the Czech Republic’s Barbora Hodinarova but the threat posed by seventh seed Monica Niculescu proved too oppressive.
Admittedly the Romanian appears more a double specialist after finishing runner-up at both Wimbledon and the US Open last year. However she proved far too strong for Kinsella at singles, winning comprehensively 6-2, 6-2.
Blake is no stranger to Australian conditions after being based in Queensland under the coaching tutelage of Charlie Fancutt for several years. But he was unfortunate enough to run into a focused 15th seed Jochen Schottler and fell away after a promising start and lost 1-6, 6-3, 6-2.