15-year-old tennis player Alina Korneeva won the junior Roland Garros

15-year-old Russian Alina Korneeva became the winner of the junior Roland Garros, which was attended by tennis players no older than 18 years old. In the singles final, she broke the resistance of 18-year-old Peruvian Lussiana Pérez-Alarcón in two sets and became the first junior since 1990 to win one after another Australian Open and France. A little earlier, one of the winners in the junior doubles was the Russian Yaroslav Demin. Kommersant correspondent rejoiced for young compatriots in Paris Evgeny Fedyakov.

The current junior Roland Garros has confirmed the trend, which is very pleasant for everyone who is a fan of Russian tennis. It continues to appear young players who can claim leading roles in a few years. In juniors, the main heroine of the tournament, of course, was Alina Korneeva, for whom the French Open was only the third junior competition in five months of this season.

The fact is that she has already switched to professional competitions with might and main and even won two titles in them – last year at a tournament with a prize fund of $15,000 in Morocco and more recently at a 60,000 tournament in South Africa. It is not surprising that in the ranking of the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) Korneeva takes 329th place. No other 15-year-old tennis player stands so high up there.

Alina Korneeva, who has excellent physical data and possesses not only strong rebound shots, but also a generally diverse game, came to Paris with her personal trainer Andrei Savin, who works with her in Moscow at Spartak. Except for the opening meeting, in the second set of which the Russian woman had to win back the match-ball, she won all her meetings quite easily.

In the final, Korneeva’s rival was the short 18-year-old Peruvian Lussiana Perez-Alarcon, who, on the way to the decisive match, outplayed two other Russian tennis players – Alevtina Ibragimova in the quarterfinals and Anastasia Guryev in the semifinals. This match took place on the Simonne Mathieu court in the midday sun, it turned out to be quite stubborn, but the decisive points in each of the two games remained with Korneeva, who won in 1 hour 36 minutes – 7:6 (7:4), 6:3.

A few hours later, Alina Korneeva had a chance to make a winning double, but in the doubles final, together with the Japanese Sara Saito, she lost to the American duo of Tira Katerina Grant and Clervy Ngunue – 3:6, 2:6. But Korneeva already achieved a rare achievement. In the 21st century, she became the first junior to win the first two Grand Slams.

The previous time, in 1990, the Bulgarian Magdalena Maleeva succeeded, who then also won the US Open and could not conquer only Wimbledon. As for the Russian victories at the junior Roland Garros, Korneeva’s predecessors were Nadezhda Petrova in 1998 and Daria Kasatkina in 2014. Both of them later reached the top ten of the adult rating, and Petrova was even third in the world.

And this Saturday began with another Russian victory won in the junior doubles by 17-year-old Muscovite Yaroslav Demin, who, together with the Mexican Rodrigo Pacheco Mendes, defeated Lorenzo Schiabazi and Gabriele Woolpitta in the final – 6:2, 6:3. It is impossible to call this result sensational. At the end of May, the newly minted Roland Garros champions won a major junior tournament in Milan and were therefore seeded in Paris as the first seed.

Demin is also from Spartak, where he started playing tennis at the age of six. Later, he moved to Barcelona, ​​and in 2021, as part of the Russian national team, he won the junior Davis Cup, which is played among 16-year-old tennis players. After that, he was invited to the academy of Rafael Nadal in Mallorca, where he is currently training under the guidance of the Spaniard Gabriel Urpi. This is an experienced specialist who at different times worked with the 2015 US Open champion Flavia Pennetta, the winner of the 2018 WTA final tournament Ukrainian Elina Svitolina, the ex-first racket of the world in doubles French Nicolas Mayu, as well as with the Spanish stars of women’s tennis years of Arancha Sanchez and Conchita Martinez. In a conversation with a Kommersant correspondent, Demin called his task for this season to get into the top 600 of the best adult ratings.