Weary champion Nicola Kuhn counts cost of too much tennis

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.

All systems pro as Kid Kuhn joins tennis elite

TORREVIEJA tennis sensation Nicola Kuhn has joined the elite list of juniors to win a men's professional title – just two months after his 17^th birthday.

Blond-haired Kuhn, youngest player in the entire draw, thrashed Davis Cup star Attila Balasz 6-4 6-0 in a one-sided final to take the $15,000 Hungary F2 Futures crown on the shores of picturesque Lake Balaton.

Top-seed Balasz, 11 years older than the 6ft 1in Kuhn and seven times champion of Hungary, had no answer to Nico's versatility and confidence as the Spanish teenager powered to victory in just 104 minutes.

Hungary F2 Futures champion ...and Nico is hungry for more success  

the previous four days, unseeded Kuhn had seen off four other experienced east European pros, all of them at least three years his senior,

Saturday's glorious achievement came just two weeks after Nico produced the shock of the Mutua Madrid Open in beating world number 61 Nikoloz Basilashvili 7-5 6-0 in the qualifying competition.

The Basilashvili win catapulted him exactly 100 places up the ATP ladder to world number 612 – and the 18 ranking points he earned for Saturday's Futures victory in Hungary will lift him to the fringe of the top 500 when next week's rankings are announced.

Kuhn, who has targeted a top 200 ranking by the end of this year, has been virtually unstoppable since severing his six-year tie with the prestigious Equelite Tennis Academy in Villena earlier this year.

The academy, run by former world No.1 Juan Carlos Ferrero, was a major influence in Innsbruck-born Nico's development – but constant commuting between La Mata and Villena took its toll on him and his parents, who moved to the Costa Blanca when Nico was three months old. The family eventually decided to put Nico's future into the hands of Torrevieja-based Pedro Caprota, the man who coached him before he moved to Villena, along with a new fitness coach, Cristian Ramajo, a new nutritionist and a new physiotherapist.

Nico is now playing the best tennis of his life and becomes only the second player born this century to win a pro title. He began the year as the world's fifth-ranked junior, but is now concentrating on climbing the ATP rankings list and thus avoiding the qualifying rat-race at senior level.

Top team: Nico with coach Pedro Caprota

“I wanted to make a change because I thought it would be best for me and my tennis,'' he says of the decision to leave the Ferrero set-up. “At the moment it is proving so. These things happen, there are times when you need a different direction and look for a change.''

Nico, who is seeded number five at this week's F3 Hungary Futures tournament at Balatonalmadi, plans to compete in only two junior competitions this year – the French Open and Wimbledon.

His lack of recent action at junior level has seen him drop from number five to 28 in the world rankings. However, he's more than happy with the compensation of having climbed almost 200 ATP places this month.

Balasz was ranked almost 400 slots higher than Kuhn before Saturday's final - but the ease of Nico's victory in Hungary and the earlier win over Basilashvili suggests that the Torry teenager is a far better player than his current ranking suggests.

''Right now the biggest handicap for me is the physical one,'' he confesses as he prepares to take on the biggest, strongest and most experienced stars of men's tennis. “It is something that the team and I are training to improve. The opponents I have faced recently are already men - and I am still a child.

“Right now my priority is to win the maximum possible matches and to keep improving''.

https://www.facebook.com/NicolaKuhntennis/

Spain and able! Tennis champ Kuhn heads for top of the world

TENNIS tug-o'-war kid Nicola Kuhn celebrated his official switch to Spanish citizenship by winning the nation's top  junior tournament on Sunday. And in the process he blew away the challenge of top-seed Jay Clarke, the Derby youngster being touted in Britain as a future Andy Murray. 

Just three weeks after his 16^th birthday, the most prodigious young talent in Spain won the Juan Carlos Ferrero Trophy at Villena – the country's only Grade 1 tournament for players aged 18 and under. 

It was his second tennis crown in a row after he bagged the Grade 2 title at Vinaros, near Castellon the previous week.

And to emphasise his huge talent, the superfit six-footer from Torrevieja was the youngest competitor in each tournament.

The back-to-back titles earned Kuhn a mammoth 250 ITF ranking points, rocketing him to No.21 in the world rankings, one of only two players in the top 100 born in the 21st century.  His success has also and providing a timely morale-booster for his first tilt at the French Open at Roland Garros next month.

The son of a German father and Russian mother, Nico and his family have lived in Torrevieja since he was three months old. However, he switched his tennis allegiance to Germany when the country he regards as home felt unable to help with his colossal travel and equipment costs.

Nicola Kuhn with his mentor, former world No.1 Juan Carlos Ferrero

Over the past four years the Kuhn kid has led the German juniors to a string of successes, including the Final of last year's Junior Davis Cup, in which he was voted the tournament's Most Valuable Player.

Despite those successes, Nico never felt totally comfortable playing for Germany, even though he speaks the language fluently, along with English and Russian.

The process proved to be far more complicated than Nico and his parents had expected – not least the red tape involved in obtaining a Spanish passport in addition to the one Nico already had.

The official switch finally came last week, coinciding with the Juan Carlos Ferrero tournament – which also happens to be his 'home' base. He has trained and studied at former world No.1 Ferrero's's academy since he was 12 and his victory in Sunday's final against fellow Spaniard Alejandro Davidovich Fokina confirmed him as Spain's top junior player.

The manner of his victory in the final was not ideal, Fokina retiring with a back injury with Kuhn takng the first set 6-3 and leading 1-0 in the second set.

But the No.7 seed had been in supreme form all week, as epitomised by his 6-1, 6-3 thrashing of 17-year-old Clarke, Britain's No.1 junior,– in the quarter-final.

Nico, who began 2016 ranked No.70, is well ahead of schedule in his declared aim of reaching the world Top 10 this year. He has also set his sights on climbing into the ATP's top 600 and providing a springboard to fulfilling his lifelong dream of becoming a top professional player.

At his current rate of progress, it seems merely a matter of when, rather than if King Kuhn will achieve his ultimate ambition. He has already sampled the Grand Slam atmosphere at the 2015 US Open and this year's Australian Open. 

Now he feels he is ready to make a serious challenge for a major junior title - and  has earmarked Wimbledon in July as his prime target this summer.

He has little or no experience of playing on grass but will practise on carpet to replicate the All England Club's surface. And he says: "I believe I can do well there.'' 

My close shave - 6am razor attack in a Spanish hospital to die for

I was asleep when a chink of light  in the doorway alerted me. A man had entered Room 114.

A 6am intruder! The last thing I wanted on top of the angina attack that had put me in Torrevieja Hospital for four days and counting. Particularly with only a flimsy regulation-blue hospital gown for protection.
As I lay on the bed, squinting blearily into the darkness, the glint of metal told me the shadowy silhouette was on a business call.
He sat down on the bed - and  I realised he was brandishing two razors in his right hand.
My worst fears were confirmed. I was about to be shaved of my last vestige of dignity…by, of all people, the camp male nurse I had silently dubbed Dapper Diego.
I hadn’t the heart to protest as DD lifted my gown and, humming quietly, went to work. Donna’s pube train was at the sharp end of a potential disaster - and my only thought was that Diego might not mind the gap.
Five minutes later, the plucked chicken with the dicky ticker was ready for her heart-to-heart with the stentist later in the day.
More than 12 hours later as it happens. But of course, Torrevieja Hospital, like just about everyone in Spain, does everything manana.
Anyway, I eventually ended up at the mercy of  the guy whose job is to ping balloons into clogged up coronary channels. It sounds like a children’s party – and it might as well have been from the way the medical team laughed and joked their way through the entire procedure.
There was I, lying there with a catheter invading half my body via a gaping hole in  my femoral artery, and they were all cackling away in Spanish like kids playing doctors with a doll.
I certainly didn’t find it funny…though their trivialisation of it all did admittedly ease my own fears that my life was in danger.
Stentist? It was more like a dentist working upside down after administering laughing gas to himself and his staff.
That all happened last Wednesday – nine days ago. And you’ve only heard a fraction of the story.

The previous Saturday, my house guest Mike had to perform the old 112 and call the emergency services when I suffered an angina attack. Minutes later, I was in the back of an ambulance roaring down the N332 at 140kph with Vettel Mickey screeching behind in his rented Ford Ka.
I was about to receive proof – if any was needed – that the Spanish health service leaves the NHS standing. Even if it does seem to work at half the speed.
Torrevieja Hospital is a magnificent building with magnificent facilities …a credit to Spanish medicine in the 21st century.
That was evident from the moment I set foot – or rather wheels – on the premises.
I was whisked through the emergency admission process in a matter of minutes…with a slight hiccup when doctors discovered the handful of different medications Mike had grabbed from my bedroom drawer weren’t mine!
Assessed and then herded into a 32-bed observation ward, I shared the following eight hours with an array of characters of various nationalities in various states of discomfort.
Only an obligatory bland, salt-free apology for lunch eased the boredom. Plus the hope that I would be discharged later that day.
I suspect that is what the doctors intended because I was the only patient in the ward not to receive an evening meal.
Mind you, that changed big-time when the nurses got word of the poor starving waif in bed C-21.
They hunted around and unwittingly brought me a magnificent fully-flavoured meal that had clearly been intended for a non-coronary patient. Salt of the earth, those nurses!
For the next five days, home was a comfortable, modern en suite room of my own. And for me, Torrevieja is right up there with any British private hospital - with the exception, of course, that you don’t pay five-star hotel prices.
You get a much better view, too. Tourists would pay good money for the glorious panorama from Room 114 across the salt lake. Picture postcard stuff, particularly at night when the glow of lights on the far shore flickered on the water.
And in Dr Piotr Chochowski, I had the most caring of cardiologists. I’ve lots more to say  - but the main thing this week is that I’m not yet ready to cash in on my Golden Leaves funeral plan.
And since the whole episode did not cost me a cent, I still have considerably more money than stents.


Published in The Courier (www.thecourier.es) 18-11-2011

The locksmith's trump card - 100 euros for a four-second job!

It still counts as just about my most embarrassing moment in Spain. I'd been in my villa near Guardamar just a few months when I managed to lock myself out. OK, most of us have done it - but in light of what developed afterwards I am beginning to wonder if there was something a little, shall we say, unusual about the way I had to pay through the nose for the privilege of getting through my own front door.

My daughter, son in law and their three kids were staying with me at the time and everything seemed wonderful when we arrived home late on a balmy summer's night. Until I attempted to open the front door, that is.

Like most of the houses around me at El Raso, when one closes the door from the outside, the lock triggers and you need a key to get back in. Anyway, when this particular fool went out, surrounded by her babbling family entourage, she failed to realise that her house key was not in her handbag - but dangling on the inside of the front door.

One locked door and seemingly no way back in. And one stupid woman who, not realising that the key needed to be turned three times in the lock to fully operate the security mechanism, went out for the evening leaving her home wide open to burglars.

Thankfully, those flimsy defences were not penetrated while we were out but when my entourage and I returned in the early hours of the morning, mass panic quickly broke out in the deserted neighbourhood. I needed a locksmith - but where on earth would I find one at 1.30am? I knew there was one living on the urbanisation, but where on earth would I start looking for him among 500 or more houses?

I got into my car and - more in hope than expectation - began to drive panic-striken around the estate.Then, glory be, a glimmer of hope - I saw the lights of a Guardia Civil jeep heading towards me. I immediately stopped the car, got out and flagged down the Guillermo Viejo (well, how else do you say Old Bill in Spanish?!).

With my limited Spanish and some mega-talking with my hands, I managed to explain to the two Guardia officers in the jeep that I had locked myself out. They duly followed me back to my house, negotiated the entourage of family members hovering on the patio, and proceeded to twiddle with the front door lock.

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''Necesita un cerrajero,'' they advised me, introducing me to a word I have never forgotten - the Spanish for locksmith. Cue more Anglo-Spanish pidgin talk and sign language and an offer to call out a locksmith for me.but it would not be cheap.

What could I do? Half an hour later, a locksmith arrived from Torrevieja, took one look at the door, pulled out what seemed to be a credit card, slid it down the frame of the door and CLICK, we were in.

Total time to get into the house - four seconds. Quicker than using a key. The cost? Precisely 100 euros.enough to make even John Terry consider changing his £175,000-a-week profession. (Not that I'd ever let him within 100 miles of my house, of course - and particularly my daughter!).

I made a costly mistake and I deservedly had to pay for it. Since then, I've learnt how to do the credit card trick myself and would strongly advise anyone with a self-locking front door to make sure they ALWAYS ensure the security mechanism is fully operative when they go out.

But I often ask myself one little question.. Were those two Guardia Civil officers so naive as not to know the 'credit card' trick themselves? And if they did, why was it necessary for them to call out a cerrajero at all? Anyway, Guillermo Viejo and his friends are welcome to give me a call if they'd like some basic lessons in housebreaking!
 
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