Our highest ranked female junior without a thread and given that she just won a G2 singles title in Serbia, it was the perfect opportunity to start one. Born on 28 Dec 1998, Ema isn't as well known as some of our other '98 junior girls like Gabi Taylor and Maia Lumsden but, her junior results have been quite steady and she's our no.4 ranked junior girls player.
She was the fourth seed in Serbia and didn't lose a set all week, until reaching the final where she defeated no. 2 seed Hana Mraz in an incredibly close final 4-6 7-6(5) 6-3. :yeah: Mraz won a G2 the other week without dropping a set, so that's a very good win for Ema. Additionally, she and her Romanian partner Bulgaru finished runners up in the doubles this week too, losing to the no.2 seeds after having beaten the top seeds in the SFs.
With all these points to go on she will break the junior top 100 for the first time earning a new CHR of about 89.
Other than this week, she's only ever won one other ITF junior singles title - a G4 on carpet last year in Portugal. However Ema has finished RU on a number of occasions: once at a G5 (to Jodie Burrage), twice at G4s (to Jade Lewis and Katharina Hobgarski) and once at a G3 in Cyprus to Jasmine AA. Also, she's reached the SFs of two other G2s losing to Pervushina and Zarytska respectively.
Nah I think that's your excuse for procrastinating.
Quite sad really, but after that brilliant week in Israel when she won the G2 singles title beating the top 3 seeds (Fridman JCHR 12 & WTA top 500, Stollar JCHR 12 & WTA top 650, Mikulskyte JCHR 42) and the week after when she fell at the SFs of the G3 event also in Israel (where she beat Mikulskyte again), she sort of went into free fall after trying her hand at higher grade tournaments. Emily even went on a 8 match losing streak at one point, before dropping back down to G4s where she managed to find a little bit of form losing in the SFs and then finishing as RU of 2 tournaments in consecutive weeks. That was back in April and she hasn't played since, I think she's going to Uni in America though (or at least I saw her video made for that purpose). Had she managed to carry those results on from Israel perhaps she would've had her own thread by now - let's just hope Ema doesn't follow the same course.
Anyway, getting back on topic I think Ema is of Serbian heritage given her name although I couldn't say that for definite.
Here's a few pictures for those of you wondering what she looks like:
Interestingly it was at the back of my mind to properly look up about Ema who I thought was Serbian (did she switch?) and was a bit confused. She has flown under radar quite a bit.
Ema is of full Serbian decent (born in NZ). I know her and her dad. She obviosuly chose to play for GB seeing that all her tennis life/career has been based in UK.
Ema flew to Japan for GA Osaka Mayor's Cup - World Super Junior Tennis Championships where she was the 12th seed, but she lost a superclose match to Saya Ito in R1 today, 5-7 7-6(3) 4-6
Ema played G2 Hong Kong Open Junior Championships this week.
She was the 4th seed there, she double-breadsticked Soomin Kim in R1, double-bagelled Chisato Hayakawa in R2, beat Nidhi Surapaneni 3-6 6-1 6-3 in QF, but she lost pretty heavily to 2nd seed Anastasia Gasanova (junior #71, CHR 47; WTA 623, CHR 563), 3 & 1
Ema received a MDWC at 25K Bath, but lost to left-handed qualifier Mariam Bolkvadze (1998 born like her, but born in January so almost a year older ) in R1 today, 6-4 3-6 1-6
Ema had a nice win against Sebastiani Leon (WR999) beating her 7-5 4-6 6-3 but then had an awful draw having to play Freya Christie in Q2 who has incidentally made the final this week with out dropping a set. She lost 4-6 3-6.
Ema beat slightly higher ranked Gavrila in the 1st round 6-2 7-5 before losing in the next round to no.5 seed Wushuang Zheng (now on a 13 match winning streak) 6-4 3-6 1-6. I wasn't following the scores closely but I did see she broke immediately at the start of the 3rd set before losing the next 6 games.
Had 2 BPs in the first game, first went with a ball going long imo it just caught the back of the line. First time seeing her play before and she seems prone to a moonball every now and then but only as a defensive tactic. She has a pretty pacey first serve and FH.
She's not particularly quick and I feel as though she hasn't been as aggressive as she was to start with. Fourlis is pretty good though so this won't be easy at all.
As the match went on I started to notice she liked the moonball, short response, then hit FH winner pattern. Which was effective but it's something she should use less and less as her game matures. Overall Jaimee was just the better player (except the serve) and deserved to win really. BH and movement are key areas to improve on. On the face of it - not a very successful trip however she'll have learnt a lot from playing these top juniors. I think G2s and the odd G1 is probably the right level for her atm.