Young Maltese player Helene Pellicano continued to establish herself on the international scene after winning the Tennis Europe Junior Masters U-14 title at the CT Rocco Polimeni club in Reggio Calabria, Italy, on Sunday.
When the line-up for the elite season-ending tournament, that feature Rafael Nadal, Flavia Pennetta and Kim Clijsters among the former champions, was confirmed last month few had given Pellicano a chance to reach the final despite being seeded no.3.
In fact, among those vying for the Under-14 title were various strong contenders with the list includ-ing three top Russian girls – Taisya Pachkaleva, Kamilla Rakhimova and Ekaterina Makarova – and Romanian duo Carmen Manu and Oana Corneanu.
However, Pellicano was not overwhelmed as she went on to become the first Maltese girl to win a Junior Masters title.
Pellicano started her tournament with a last-eight match against Rakhimova.
She came from behind to eliminate the Russian 4-6 6-1 6-4 and book her place in the last-four against Corneanu, the surprise semi-finalist after beating top seed Pachkaleva in the previous round.
Corneanu won the opening set 6-0 but Pellicano relied on all her fighting qualities to recover some lost confidence and win the next two sets 6-3 6-2 for a place in the final where she met Marta Kostyuk, of Ukraine.
In contrast to her two previous matches, Pellicano started well but Kostyuk found her range to level the match at one-set apiece.
Kostyuk then raced to a 5-1 final set lead before the third seed once again found her rhythm, calmly making her way back into the match and taking a 6-5 lead.
By the time Kostyuk forced a deciding tie-break the momentum was with her opponent, and sure enough Pellicano conceded just one point to take the sixth and biggest title of what has been a productive year on the Tennis Europe Junior Tour.
“I started very well and then I lost my concentration a little bit, and she started to play better. In the third set I had to concentrate really hard to come back from 5-1 down and I started playing very well,” Pellicano told tenniseurope.org.
“I am very happy with this year. I had some great matches and have played a lot of different players.
“Next year I’ll play some U-16s and also some Under-18s.”
This year’s participants hailed from 15 different nations.
Russia led the way with seven qualifiers, followed by Ukraine and Romania with four. Belarus, Italy, Hungary and Serbia all had two players in action in the boys/girls U-14 and U-16 singles.
In the latest ranking list issued by Tennis Europe, Pellicano climbed to ninth place on 725 points, ahead of Kostyuk at no.10.
Russia’s Pachkaleva leads the way with 980 points.