March 13, 2022 - Petra Marčinko has won her first professional singles title! This comes after the 16-year-old tennis sensation was named the world's best junior in 2021 and won the Australian Open Juniors in January.
Petra Marčinko is the winner of the ITF tennis tournament in Antalya, Turkey! On Sunday, the best junior tennis player in the world from Zagreb fought for her first title in a senior competition at the $25,000 ITF tournament in Antalya, Turkey.
The 16-year-old reached her premier title in professional singles tournaments after defeating France's Carole Monnet (279th on the WTA list) convincingly in two sets - 6:4, 6:1.
The French tennis player offered more resistance in the first set, in which it was equal at 3:3, and then won only one of the next nine games. The left-handed Monnet already has six ITF titles in her career and won all six at tournaments in the Tunisian city of Monastir, in 2019 and 2020, on hard courts.
This is the 17th consecutive victory for Marčinko and the 11th in 2022. After this success, Petra expects excellent progress on the WTA list; from 928th place, she will jump to 572nd place for a new career ranking.
Marčinko needed two hours and 26 minutes of great fighting to win the semifinal against 22-year-old Ipek Oz on Saturday. Marčinko beat Oz (WTA - 274) 7:6 (3), 1:6, 6:3.
Recall, the world's no. 1 junior defeated Belgium's Sofia Costoulas 7:5, 6:1 in the Australian Open final in Melbourne in January. The young Zagreb native thus became the fourth Croatian female tennis player to succeed at the Australian Open Juniors after Mirjana Lučić (1997), Jelena Kostanić (1998), and Ana Konjuh in 2013. She also broke the Croatian drought of winning Junior Grand Slams - the last time Borna Ćorić and Ana Konjuh did it was at the 2013 US Open.
Petra also became the first player in history to win the most prestigious junior tournament - Orange Bowl - in singles and doubles competitions and ended last year as the best junior in the world.
Marčinko defeated the seventh junior in the world, Russian Diana Schneider, in the final of the Orange Bowl in three sets (3:6, 6:1, 6:3). Petra reached her second title with Schneider in the doubles final, celebrating 7:6, 6:0 against the Czech team Brenda and Linda Fruhvirotva.
Source: HTS
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