At year-end another fantastic opportunity arrives for Thai tennis fans to watch the world’s leading women tennis players, live, as they play at the Intercontinental World Tennis Thailand Championship 2017 at True Arena tennis court, Hua-Hin, Prachuap Khirikhan, during 23rd – 24th December 2017.
Four of the world’s Top 10 women tennis players will be joining the competition: Simona Halep, Romanian, ranked No. 1 in the world; Kristyna Pliskova, the world’s 4th, from Czech; Jelena Ostapenko, 7th place in the world, from Latvia; and Johanna Conan, ranking 9th place in the world, from the United Kingdom.
25-year-old Simona Halep began playing tennis at the age of only four, before becoming serious during the next two years in admiration of tennis idols, Justine Henin, from Belgium, the former world- ranking No. 1 female tennis player, and Andrei Pavel, the former world-ranking No. 1 tennis player from Romania. Andrei Pavel currently coaches Halep.
Romanian tennis players have been making outstanding contributions from the youth level up, notably by winning the “French Open” single women’s Grand Slam Champion in 2008, before participating in the International Tennis Federation (ITF). Halep herself finished in the top 50 in the world between 2010 and 2012, later becoming famous for winning six matches of WTA tournaments in 2013, further success culminating this year when she reached the finals of women’s singles, the “French Open”, and also qualified for the semi-finals of the “Australian Open” and the “Wimbledon” semi-finals. At that time, she was ranked as the 2nd ranking female tennis player in the world. During 2015 – 2017, Halep was recognized as ranking 5th in the world and successfully won two matches in the Premier Mandatory Class WTA Championship, the second highest from the Grand Slam. She entered the India Welsh Open in 2015 and the Madrid Open” in 2017, gaining entry into the final round of the French Open again, but was defeated by Jelena Ostapenko.
However, Halep attained the ranking of the World’s Number One tennis player this October, from being ranked 25th in the top female tennis players in the world. She has been noted by the magazine “Capitol” in her hometown as the most successful Romanian woman and is numbered among the 300 wealthiest Romanian citizens, with a total revenue in 2017 of over 20 million euros.
Kristyna Pliskova, ranked the fourth-best player in the world, made history as the first tennis player from the Czech Republic to become the world’s # 1 tennis player, which she held for a short period of eight weeks during 17 July – 10 September this year. Of course, this recognition does not include the legendary Martina Navratilova, a former Czechoslovakian tennis player who attained the world’s No. 1 in 1978, by which time she had been living in the US, and is still reckoned among the very greatest of women players.
Nonetheless, just like Haleb, Pliskova is the world’s No. 1 player who has never touched the Grand Slam title. She entered the final round in the US Open one year ago, before losing to Angelique Kerber, the German tennis player in the duel three sets and also reached the quarterfinals of the French Open this year. Pliskova’s most recognizable strength in the game has been in serving, since 2015 onwards. Pliskova is the highest serving ace of the WTA Tour, throughout 2015 serving 517 times, and in 2016 serving 530 times (leaving behind the second by a wide margin of 206 times). Most recently, this year, she ended the season with a total of 452 serving aces. Since the WTA Tour began in 2008, no female tennis player has served more than 500 aces for two years in a row as Pliskova has done.
Jelena Ostapenko, from Latvia, is at only 20 years already the 7th top player in the world. Truly a rising star, after becoming a Grand Slam champion in the French Open by turning over 2-1 sets, she became the first Latvian tennis player to win a Grand Slam singles title.
Remarkably enough, if you peruse the profile of this Latvian woman tennis player, there is little to harbinger such enormous success. Like a stroke of lightning, she became a Wimbledon 2014 youth champion, reached the Wimbledon semi-final in 2016, and won the third round of four in the Grand Slam tournament this year. Moreover, Ostapenko has varied interests as well, one of them being performance dance which she has trained in since childhood. While faced with how to allocate her time to practice both tennis and dance, in her ambition to attain excellence in both, Ostapenko admits that she eventually chose tennis as her main sport, but dancing as a hobby. However, she says that learning the rhythm of dance has actually helped her to have good footwork and motion on the court, and her favorite dance is the Samba.
The last tennis player to join the Intercontinental Tennis World Championship Thailand 2017 this year is ranked the 9th best tennis player in the world and from the United Kingdom. The name of Johanna Konta became known to tennis fans a few years ago after she reached the fourth round of the US Open in 2015, and was recognized as a major hope in British tennis when she was able to break through to reach the final four of Wimbledon this year.
In fact, Konta did not play tennis as a UK representative from the beginning, being a descendant of Hungarian immigrants and born in Sydney, Australia. However, she did grow up in an athletic environment, as her grandfather was Tamas Curtis, a former Hungarian national football player and at one time the coach of the Ghana national team.
During childhood, Konta grew up at North Beach in Sydney and at eight years old, she began playing tennis, soon competing on behalf of Australia. The family then moved to Europe to help her find more opportunities for practice and to nurture her serious tennis playing ambitions. Konta trained in tennis at the Sanchez Tennis Academy in Spain before the family decided to settle in England, received British citizenship in May 2012, deciding to transfer the nationality of her tennis playing to the United Kingdom. Currently, the 26-year-old tennis player holds three passports, from Hungary, Australia and the United Kingdom. She is a multi-national athlete who has begun to make outstanding progress in the last two years, which has raised interesting issues concerning her national representation and her origins.
In the Australian Open in 2016, she surpassed the semi-finals, before losing to Angelique Kerber, arguing that she could still play for another country. Before that, Konta has declared that while she has roots as an Australian she is proud to be representing the UK, where she grew up after she was 14 years old.
This brief history and tips about the four incredible tennis players should pique the interest of tennis fans across Thailand, as the demonstrate their superb skills in Hua Hin from 23rd to 24th December. Each one of them is considered a hope and inheritor of the legendary best of women’s tennis as they make their own careers in this dynamic sport.
This very special event in tennis, the Intercontinental Tennis World Championship Thailand 2017, is a match that tennis fans definitely must not miss.
