Helene Pelicano reaches final

Two U-10 tennis players from the Gordon Asciak Tennis Academy, Helene Pelicano and Francesca Curmi, recently took part in the prestigious Lemon Bowl U-10 tournament in Rome.

The Lemon Bowl is considered to be one of the most important junior tournaments in the world and in fact over 1,900 players from all over Italy and other parts of the world took part. Top professional players such as Jankovic, Kournikova and Tipsrevic used to play in this tournament when they were still juniors. The categories were U-16, 14,12 and U-10.

Helene Pelicano, Malta’s no 1 U-10 player was only one point away from achieving probably one of the best results for junior tennis in Malta.

To reach the final Helene beat Mori, Forcisi, Mascolo and Girelli all from Italy. In the final Helene faced a very steady player Paoletti. Helene lost the first set 6/4 and was 4-1 down in the second. Helene, who has tremendous fighting spirit, came back to win the second set 7/6 and in the third set, had match point at 6-5 up in the tie break. Unfortunately she lost the match point and the match 9-7.

The other Maltese player, Francesca Curmi, also had a very good tournament. She beat Mastromarino, Cinque and Iannone before losing in the semi final to the eventual winner Paoletti 6/2 6/0.

Academy head coach Gordon Asciak said that this is an extremely good result for these two girls and the academy. “These results show that the work we are doing with our juniors is obviously paying off. These two girls, along with our promising juniors attending our academy, will soon have the possibility to train the whole year round because we will soon have two indoor courts ready by the beginning of March,” said Asciak

Other foreign coaches who accompanied other teams to this tournament also commented that the two Maltese girls have excellent technique and good footwork.