 |
| Shining stars: Zsombor Piros (left) and Nicola Kuhn celebrate their French Open junior doubles success |
Exhausted tennis hero Nicola Kuhn missed out on becoming a double Grand Slam champion on Saturday after refusing his playing partner's offer to help ease his path to the French Open singles title.
All-action Kuhn and Hungarian teenager Zsombor Piros, the top seeds, went on to win the junior boys' doubles crown at Roland Garros – but a near-impossible playing schedule during the week eventually cost Nico a 7-6 6-3 defeat in the singles final.
 |
| Paris singles champ Alexei Popyrin (left) with runner-up Nicola Kuhn |
Torrrevieja-based Kuhn, 17, one of the tennis world's top emerging talents, had been urged by his family not to take on the enormous task of competing in both singles and doubles. And when all-conquering Nico found himself facing a bottleneck of THREE important matches on Friday, Piros – who had already been knocked out of the singles - generously offered to abandon his own progress by withdrawing the partnership from the doubles.
Ever-keen Kuhn decided, however, to take on the near-impossible triple challenge and went on to win all three matches – a singles semi-final against world No.1 Miomir Kecmanovic plus a doubles quarter and semi-final.
The strain of arguably the most exhausting schedule faced by any competitor at Roland Garros finally took its toll on Saturday morning, when a clearly weary Kuhn lost 7-6 6-4 to lanky Australian Alexei Popyrin in the singles final.
Three hours later came the happy ending as he and Piros took the boys' doubles crown, convincingly beating American duo Danny Thomas and Vasil Kirkov 6-4 6-4 in the final.
Kuhn will be eligible to play at junior level until the end of 2019 but is unlikely to compete in under-18 tournaments after next month's Wimbledon.
Currrently ranked 529 places behind world number one Andy Murray, he has targeted a place in the ATP top 200 this year – an achievement that could well make him the highest-ranked 17-year-old in the world.
