The Fruhvirtovas appear to like taking part in tennis in India. Six months after Linda Fruhvirtova, the present global No 53 elderly 17, captured the 2022 WTA Chennai Open, her more youthful sister Brenda, 15, went all of the means on the ITF $40K Women’s Open in Bengaluru on Sunday.
While the Chennai crown in September was once Linda’s first WTA identify and fourth general in singles, Brenda had a staggering 8 victories at the ITF excursion final 12 months by myself, essentially the most by way of any participant within the season.
Incredibly, it was once Brenda’s first 12 months as a professional, one by which she started as the sector No 1095 within the WTA singles charts and signed off at No 128 as a teenager sensation primed for stardom. The indicators and surge, regardless that, have been there all alongside.
Her first triumph in Argentina in February final 12 months put her along the likes of Justine Henin and Anna Kournikova as a 14-year-old ITF singles champion. She repeated that the next week to transform the primary 14-year-old in historical past to win ITF singles titles in back-to-back weeks.
Six months later, Brenda, nonetheless 14, was the youngest participant ever to flaunt 5 ITF singles titles. This was once a duration the place she tasted 5 match victories at the jump between June and September, cooking up a 27-match win streak within the procedure. By the time the 8th identify took place in October, Brenda was once two shy of the document for many ITF titles in a season (Arantxa Rus, 2019).
“Last year gave me a lot of confidence. It was an amazing year,” Brenda mentioned in a talk from Bengaluru after the win. “But still, in tennis, every week is a new week, and every tournament where you don’t win the whole thing you are kind of disappointed.”
As jaw-dropping as her professional debut season was once, it directed numerous consideration and eyeballs towards her. The teenager felt that. Even extra so on the 2023 Australian Open the place she was the 5th youngest to qualify for the principle draw at Melbourne Park ahead of shedding within the first spherical. Title No 9 in India, her first of 2023, subsequently intended that bit extra to her.
“For positive, there’s a large number of drive on me. But then I say to myself, ‘I’m nonetheless 15. I’ve were given to benefit from the tournaments much more’. Because, , it is what I reside for. I check out to not rigidity about it, although there’s drive on me. I’ve were given to a horny top score for my age, so other people do be expecting issues from me.”
Her elder sister, a former junior global No 2, has been there and finished that. Brenda has noticed that and adopted that. Quite actually, now and then. A 12 months after Linda bagged the identify at Les Petits As, a 12-year-old Brenda received it in 2020, turning into the youngest winner of the celebrated U-14 junior global match. As a lot as they script those historical sister stories, the Czech sensations infrequently talk about the game.
“We do give each other some advice at times. But we don’t actually talk about tennis a lot, unless either of us is going through some struggles or something in a tournament,” Brenda mentioned.
Growing up in Prague, the sisters performed numerous sports activities in class however “tennis was always the most important sport for me”, although nobody of their circle of relatives performed it. “The other sports were like hobbies while tennis was always the thing we wanted to do in future,” she mentioned. “We had big dreams from it since we were very young.”
Helping them form that dream over the previous couple of years is Frenchman Patrick Mouratoglou, who has coached the likes of Serena Williams and in whose academy each the sisters teach in Nice. “Patrick is helping us so much. He is anyone who has a large number of revel in and is an overly hardworking and sure particular person. It approach so much to have anyone like him round me,” Brenda mentioned.
Brenda senses the hype round her, but her targets are not any much less lofty. “I wish to make the highest 100 this 12 months and play neatly in Grand Slams. And, in the long run, be the sector No 1 and win as many Grand Slams as imaginable.”