SLOVAKIAN top seed Renata Jamrichova continued her blitz of the Australian Open Junior Girls singles draw with another rout, this time a 51-minute win in the quarter finals. Jamrichova made light work of French wildcard Ksenia Efremova, running out a 6-2 6-1 winner in impressive fashion.
The 16-year-old has far been the most impressive of the Junior Girls thus far, and well deserving of her top seed status. The result was the third singles match this tournament where the Slovakian conceded three games or less, with the teenager flexing her muscles with a wide array of weapons at her disposal.
Jamrichova won 81 per cent of her first serve points off a 73 per cent clip, and put up three aces among 15 winners. She also had 12 less unforced errors than her opponent (13-25), while breaking a massive five times from eight opportunities, and saving the only break point she faced. Even when coming to the net, Jamrichova was too strong, winning six of 10 chances, and took control off Efremova’s serve with a 44 per cent return success rate.
The top seed’s next opponent is Japanese 10th seed Ena Koike who ended the run of Russian 15th seed, Vlada Mincheva in straight sets. Having to fight tooth-and-nail in the first set before emerging victorious in an 8-6 tiebreaker, Koike stormed home in the last set to collect a bagel in a 7-6 6-0 performance.
Koike hit five more winners than Mincheva (21-16) and had 19 less unforced errors (22-41) in a well-calculated effort. Unfortunately the Russian did most of the damage to herself with a whopping 19 unforced errors to only one winner in the second set, winning just 10 points across the six games.
Unfortunately the rain delay stopped the other two Junior Girls’ singles matches from going ahead with Australian Emerson Jones broken in both her service games early in her match against second seed Sara Saito. The Japanese talent led 4-1 having won 20 points to 12. The other match was tighter with 16th seed Iva Ivanova leading 12th seed Mingge Xu 5-4 on serve with both to be rescheduled to today.
All four Junior Boys quarter finals were completed yesterday before the rain hit with Emerson’s brother Hayden Jones suffering defeat to Czech, Jan Kumstat. Jones won the first set in a tiebreaker before Kumstat hit back to win the last two sets and salute 6-7 6-3 7-5 in two hours and 39 minutes.
Kumstat takes on Dutchman Mees Rottgering in the semi-final after the fellow unseeded talent took out Kazakh giant-killer Amir Omarkhanov in a dominant performance. Rottgering won 6-2 6-0 in 62 minutes, including 12 of the last 13 games.
Down the bottom of the draw, second seed Norwegian Nicolai Budkov Kjaer fought past a challenge from American Kaylan Bigun in three sets, 3-6 7-6 6-2 in two hours and 14 minutes to book a spot in the semi-finals. He will now face fourth seed Japanese young gun Rei Sakamoto who eliminated Cooper Woestendick to win in 80 minutes.