Widely recognised as one of the world’s leading junior tennis events of any age group, the Les Petits As Mondiale Lacoste celebrated 35 years in 2017.
The boys’ semifinals featured three of the top 4-ranked players on the Tennis Europe Junior Tour. #1 seed and last year’s Junior Masters runner-up Holger Rune easily progressed to the semi where he ran into Italian fourth seed Luca Nardi. The first set proved to be a tough fight, with Nardi prevailing 9-7 in the tiebreaker before going on to win the second set easily.
In the other half of the draw, American Alexander Bernard played his way to the semi finals, losing out to Hamad Medjedovic of Serbia. Nardi got off to a flying start in the final, taking the first set 6-2. His Serbian counterpart turned up the heat in the second, pushing the Italian to the limit, but Nardi saw him off 7-5 in that set to claim his fifth Tennis Europe Junior Tour title – and biggest yet.
The girls’ final went the way of Russian second seed Maria Timofeeva. In-form American Cori Gauff, on the back of her win at the Category 1 event in Bolton last week, continued to make waves on her way to the semifinal where she lost to Ukrainian Dasha Lopatetskaya. It was the turn of the Ukrainian, a wildcard recipient, to set tongues wagging as she fought her way through a very tough draw, overcoming European #1 Oksana Selekhmeteva (RUS) and seventh seed Charlotte Owensby (USA) on way to the final. Timofeeva, on the other hand had an easier route to the final as the number two seed, winning all of her matches without the loss of a set. The final was not one way traffic for the Russian, however. After dropping the second set, Timofeeva regrouped to back up her recent win at the Christmas Cup to take the title 6-3, 4-6, 6-3.