The “Peter Hagedorn International” of the Waiblingen Tennis Club rightly bears its new name: the winners of the Tennis Europe tournaments in the U14 competition are Elisa Rohrbach from France and Dominik Vagner from the Czech Republic, in the U16s Ran Wakana from Japan and Kent Müller from Stuttgart.

Kent Müller from TEC Waldau Stuttgart and Tim Kohl from Troisdorf reached the U16 final. Müller, who reached the U16 semi-finals in Waiblingen last year, knocked out Latvian number three seed Rihards Neimanis 6-1, 6-3 in the semi-final. In the final he met Tim Kohl, who had eliminated Benjamin Fock (Reutlingen) 6:3, 3:6, 6:2 in the previous round. The final lasted just 59 minutes until Müller clinched the winner’s trophy 6:1, 6:3. “It’s my biggest success so far – and Waiblingen is also my favorite tournament,” the Stuttgarter said after his success.

Mueller has improved a lot

Müller has improved a lot this season – says his uncle, TV journalist Guido Dobbratz. Müller trains with Jakub Herm-Zahlava in Cannstatt and goes to school in Mannheim – two days of face-to-face lessons, the rest being homework. And at the Boss Open at the Weissenhof in Stuttgart, he was a hitting partner for the players.

In girls under 16, second seed Elisa Rohrbach (France) won 6:1, 6:4 against Chrysuola Paraskevopoulou. The little Greek from Thessaloniki attends a German school and also improved her language skills in Waiblingen.

Czech Dominik Vagner was 3:5 behind Moroccan Abdaziz Guennouni in the first set of the final, but still won 7:5, 6:2. What is striking about the little Moroccan: while the other young stars are still parading on the court with big tennis bags, Abdaziz only arrived with his backpack, three rackets and a few T-shirts to change into.

Japan’s Ran Wakana took advantage of the resignation of Kim Gysin (Bad Friedrichshall) with a score of 4:3 in the girls’ U16 semi-final. In the final against Ukrainian Polina Skilar, Wakana was the superior player and won 7:5, 6:2.

Advantage for Italians

Apart from the German participants, the Italians provided the most participants from the academies of Padua, Genoa and Verona. Tournament Director Peter Hagedorn commented: “It’s no wonder the Italians are far better than the Germans internationally as well. Look at Matteo Berrettini or Jannik Sinner on the men’s side.” Six participants came from Japan (Hagedorn: “They’ve been very good in women’s tennis for years”), Australia sent a group of twelve and Canada sent ten players to Waiblingen. All under very good trainers.

And the Germans? Hagedorn spoke to a few coaches at the facility and came to the following conclusion: “For many players, association games are often more important than international tournaments. This already starts with the registrations of the youth teams, where you have to report according to the performance classes (LK) and not according to the rankings. As a result, many participate in one-day tournaments with two matches and improve their LK instead of competing at international level.” Since “these LK-Fuzzi tournaments” were introduced a few years ago, the decline of German tennis in the youth sector has been significant – and this has an impact later. ten in the world rankings.”

Almost only foreign players

In the most important U14 competition, only Selma Hohmann, who is actually from Luxembourg, and Lasse Bohr from Hechingen made the bottom eight. In the semi-finals, there were all foreign players from Ukraine, Morocco, Turkey, Czech Republic, Turkey, Greece, Romania, Great Britain and France. The best players play the U 14s in Tennis Europe tournaments such as Waiblingen in the U 16 class. The best players already have the right to start in the ITF junior tournaments, where they collect points to be able to start later in the ATP and WTA tournaments.

The Canadian girls were groomed by Dorothea Enic – and she won the U16 competition in Waiblingen in 2007, went on to be in the top 200 in the world and won the Fed Cup for Serbia. And there were participants with prominent relatives. Quarter-finalist Leylaton Aliassime is the cousin of ATP top ten Felix Auger-Aliassime. Or Pietro Gaudenzi: He is the son of ATP boss Andrea Gaudenzi and won the U14 doubles final with partner Elia Ruffino against Matti Barth/Lasse Bohr (Reutlingen/Hechingen).

Lots of praise for the Waiblingen

Karol Izmendi has been a supervisor at Waiblingen for eleven years. And he has been praising the TCW team for years (“perfect cooperation with a great team”) with Hagedorn, Gisela Stecher and – new to the team – Dian Stephan, who takes care of everything besides sports at the “Peter Hagedorn International”. And this just after two years of membership in the TCW. Even more: his Indonesian mother Yeyen knows the mother Claudia of the only starter from the Pacific island state, Ethan Zapp.

There was also praise from the outside. Brazil’s Carolina Vialle has thanked Peter Hagedorn that her son Henrique only played his first game on Monday evening after arriving from Croatia late on Sunday evening. The Kazakh coach called Waiblingen “the best organized tournament in the series along with Waiblingen, Ulm, Augsburg and Renningen”.

Former gardener Ivan Turic came from his retirement in Croatia to take care of “my grounds”, which even survived the heavy rains on Friday. And he receives praise from all the coaches and supervisors. About 25 people participate in the tournament. For example in the driving service. And the drivers also do a lot of advertising for viticulture in the Remstal. Not only did the Canadian manager Philippe Courteau buy Remstal-Riesling, but Karoly Izmendi was also rewarded for his work with a “Riesling Großes Gewächs”.