Wimbledon Open: Spain grabs first boys’ title in fifty years

Twenty-four hours after Garbiñe Muguruza had become only the second Spanish ladies’ champion at Wimbledon, it was another Spaniard, Alejandro Davidovich Fokina, who was thumbing through the history books once he had landed the boys’ singles trophy.

The 18-year-old from Malaga used his aggressive baseline game to neutralise big-serving Argentine Axel Geller 7-6(2), 6-3 to become just the second Spanish Junior Wimbledon champion and the first for 50 years after Manuel Orantes won in 1967.

Both players came into the final on the back of big wins after Geller had taken down the No.1 seed Corentin Moutet in the semi-finals and Davidovich Fokina had beaten world No.3 Wu Yibing in the last eight.

Although Davidovich Fokina was the seeded player of the two – and ranked one place higher in the ITF’s junior listings – in many ways it was Geller who stepped onto the No.1 Court as favourite after warming up for Wimbledon with victory at the Grade 1 grass-court junior event in Roehampton last week.

But once the first 12 games were shared it was No.8 seed Davidovich Fokina who raised his level, sprinting into a 4-0 lead in the tie-break before quickly turning that into a 7-2 shootout success.

After taking an injury timeout for a back problem after three games of the second, Geller could only stay with his Spanish opponent until the eighth game when Davidovich Fokina broke for 5-3. Soon afterwards a delicate backhand drop shot sealed the win.

“I’m very happy to be the second [Spanish] junior champion of Wimbledon. I’m in shock,” said the world No.10, who also reached the boys’ singles semi-finals at Roland Garros last month.

“I was thinking, ‘Okay, I want to win this. I want to show the people who I am, that I want to play tennis, professional tennis. I want to show them what I want to do with my life.’”

Geller struck one 135mph serve during the match, the kind of power Davidovich Fokina had rarely seen in junior tennis.

“[After the match] I was talking with him. I say, ‘Man, you serve so hard, I can’t see the ball! Was like Karlovic!’ He played really well with his serve.”

Once he’d dusted himself down, Geller had one more chance to use that big serve to get his hands on a winners’ trophy when he teamed up with Chinese Taipei’s Hsu Yu Hsiou in the boys’ doubles final.

And he didn’t disappoint, shrugging off the disappointment of his earlier defeat to help his team beat Austria’s Jurij Rodionov and Czech Michael Vrbensky 6-4, 6-4.

Earlier, Serbia’s Olga Danilovic and Slovenia’s Kaja Juvan beat No.4 seeded Americans Catherine McNally and Whitney Osuigwe 6-4, 6-3 to win the girls’ doubles title.

Source: Lee Goodall| Wimbledon