Zimmer has a shot at the next ITF title on home soil

In February, she was only stopped in the final of the 2023 Carinthian Juniors Cup III, backed by Freisacher von Wolfsberg. But now Alexander Zimmer has another chance to win on home soil at the ITF Youth Championship in Austria. The 17-year-old reached her third final of the season at the Maria Lanzendorf Open, an event in the J100 intermediate category, following Manacor (Spain; ITF J60) and Wolfsburg (ITF J100). The third-seeded Lower Austrian (ITF 276) brought the 13-year-old Brazilian and seventh-seeded Victoria Luisa Barros (ITF 364) to her knees in the semifinals with a score of 4:6, 6:4, 6:3. The battle for her first international U18 singles title on Saturday will be against Poland’s Nadia Kolbij (ITF 223), her doubles partner, the second-place finisher. There was no longer any chance of success there: Zimmer, who was also the last ÖTV representative in the race, lost narrowly in the semi-finals, where Kolbij took second place and Josephine Kunz (Switzerland) and Tamara Sramkova (Slovakia) took third place 4:6, 6:4 and 6:10 in the match tiebreaker.

Among the boys, top-ranked player Benedikt Szerencsits (ITF 204) and ÖTV-contracted player Janis Graske (ITF 538), seeded 11th, were the last Austrians to be eliminated in the quarter-finals against Croatian opponents. On the other hand, the latter still has a chance to win the title in the double competition. With sixth seed Alexander Wagner, Graski defeated seventh seeds Robin Javani (Bulgaria) and Jaishnav Shinde (India) in the semifinals by a narrow margin of 1:6, 7:5, 11:9 in the match tie-break. In the final, Team Burgenlander and Team Vienna will compete for success on home soil against eighth-seeded Croatians Lovro Marisic and Fran Raconic. They not only eliminated Szerencsits and Graski in the singles quarter-final, but also Szerencsits and Italian Guglielmo Verdese 6:2, 6:3 in the other doubles semi-final. This also represents an opportunity for revenge.