19-year-old teenager Worst on top of his tennis game
Fourth seed Arili Boshoff, a Grade 8 learner from Hoërskool Nelspruit in Mpumalanga, won the under-14 girls’ title, defeating top-seed Tayla Wilmot 6-1, 6-3 in the decider.
The 19-year-old Pretoria-raised teenager Christiaan Worst turned his American College summer vacation into a profitable one by capturing the Wilson 150 000 men’s singles tennis title at the Gauteng East Tennis Centre in Lakefield on Sunday (June 9).
Worst, who came into the tournament seeded 15th, landed the top prize of R20 000 in the TSA-sanctioned event, held over two weekends at the tennis centre on the banks of the Benoni Lake.
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He downed fourth-seeded fellow left-hander Dylan Salton 7-6 (3), 3-6, 6-0 in the final.
Worst is presently on his summer vacation from Van der Bilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, in the USA, where he is on a tennis scholarship and is using his time back home to sustain his training.
Being used to playing predominantly at sea level since relocating to the USA, he admitted struggling to contend with the altitude up in Benoni and found himself breathing a bit heavily at times.
With a R20 000 carrot dangling before him, he admitted that he felt a bit of pressure, but once he shed the initial nerves, he got
into his stride. “It’s hard playing for R20 000 and I had to try to get that out of my head. It’s a lot of zero’s,” he said.
Tennis pedigree runs deep in Worst’s family.
He is the nephew of former South African professional Danie Visser, a doubles specialist who won three Grand Slam men’s doubles titles and topped the world doubles rankings back in the 1990s.
With seeded players have fallen by the wayside in the women’s draw, Namibian-born Liniqie Theron out-slugged another unseeded player, Maja Gledic, 6-4 and 7-5, in a tense baseline duel featuring some unusually long rallies, to taste success in the women’s final.
Theron, 24, a coach at St Mary’s DSG School in Pretoria, told the City Times that she hadn’t played much competitive tennis recently, so she never placed any undue pressure on herself.
“I came into the tournament having not played in a while, but after the first two rounds, that competitive streak in me just seemed to come back naturally and things just worked out I guess,” said Theron.
Top seed Connor Doig, 14, a learner at St Stithians College in Randburg, took the honours in the Boys under-14 singles category with a 6-1, 7-5 victory over Daniel Carver in the final.
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Trailing 3-5 in the second set after what he admitted was a lapse in concentration, Doig regained his confidence and reeled off four successive games to wrap up the clash.
