Tennis-University News – 5th week of November

Tue, 03.12.2019

TU on the road

With the first advent and the beginning of the Christmas season, the 2019 season is already over for most players at the TU. Not so for Karlis Ozolins. In the last two tournament weeks of the year, the Latvian showed his top form once again. After his title run in Haifa, Israel, last week, the 17-year-old served in front of his home crowd in the last week of November. At the J3 in Liepaja, Karlis went into the tournament as top seed and lived up to his role as favourite. On Sunday he celebrated his fifth ITF title of the year after a long week. On his way there, the TU player proved his comeback qualities. Twice he managed to win the match after losing the first set, so did he in the final against second seed Swiss Jerome Kym. Karlis was thus able to increase his already impressive rate of won three-set matches to 70% in 2019.

After two tournament titles and a series of ten wins in a row, it is hard to finish the season, but Karlis now deserves some days off without any doubt.

home sweet home

At the base in Offenbach most of our players already trained with regard to the new season. Last week, however, we had to relinquish India’s top player Praj Gunneswaran. He took advantage of the few free weeks of the year to marry his girlfriend Sudarshana in his home country. Within short time the wedding bells rang for the second time at the TU. Of course, TU legend Sriram Balaji did not miss the celebrations in India as well. We wish Praj and his wife all the best for their future together!

Just in time for the first of December the first ever TU Advent calendar was launched on Sunday! During the advent season, great gifts will be raffled off on our Instagram page, so a look at it is more worthwhile than ever!

other success stories

Head start in my career – Kevin Jordi

Head start in my career – Kevin Jordi

    Kevin Jordi trained from September 2011 to May 2013 at Tennis University. Here, Kevin enjoyed “Professional training standards and professional tournament coaching.” Kevin managed to regularly qualify for Futures level tournaments and win rounds. Kevin...

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Learned a lot for my life. – Tim Focht

Learned a lot for my life. – Tim Focht

Tim Focht - Tim Focht reflects his time at Tennis University, and having spent much of his time away from home during this period learning to live life independently. Tim: “Learned a lot for my life.” Tim had joined Tennis University in 2010, with a performance class...

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Our first player – Sriram Balaji

Our first player – Sriram Balaji

    Sriram Balaji, called „Bala“, was the first player of the TU. A very loyal, honest and hard working character he put in a lot of work and became a Davis Cup player for India during these years. As the pictures show he was nowhere near the athlete that he...

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From #470 to #72 – Cedrik Marcel Stebe

From #470 to #72 – Cedrik Marcel Stebe

Cedrik came to the TU in the beginning of 2011 and was a success story from the start. Within 9 months he climbed the rankings from 470 to 72 and became Davis Cup player for Germany. His very talented footwork and his mindset to work incredibly hard got him on the...

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IMMEDIATELY SUCCESSFUL – Jürgen Melzer

IMMEDIATELY SUCCESSFUL – Jürgen Melzer

    Juergen asked Alex right after Alex’s last official match in Vienna 2012 on Center Court, after he lost to him in doubles, if he could coach him from now on. So he was retired for 5 seconds and already took over the next job. Jürgen was ranked 40 at the...

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Together to #75- Prajnesh Gunneswaran

Together to #75- Prajnesh Gunneswaran

    Praj joined the TU in 2011 and has been with us ever since. He developed from not being ranked to breaking the top 150 for the first time in 2018, where he beat his first top 25 player (Denis Shapovalov) at the Mercedes Cup in Stuttgart. He also won the...

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