Rainer Schüttler from Korbach, Andrea Petkovic from Darmstadt, Tim Pütz from Frankfurt – the footsteps of Hessian tennis greats who set out to conquer the sports world are big. Her successor is uncertain. So what about the Hessian tennis offspring in 2023?
“We are on the right track,” says Michael Otto. The 48-year-old is Vice President of the Hessian Tennis Association (HTV) and Frankfurt Eintracht. He headed the club’s tennis department until 2019, before he was appointed to the club’s executive committee at the suggestion of President Peter Fischer. Even on annual vacation in Mallorca at the beginning of January, the tennis official gives interviews and cheers in real time with the Eintracht youngsters, who are 1200 kilometers away in Riederwald at the Frankfurt junior tournament, where important points for the junior world rankings of the International Tennis Federation (ITF) are awarded are.
Otto sees important framework conditions in youth tournaments with international players in order to strengthen the tennis location of Hesse. “The tournament landscape has grown, we now have some good competitions in the youth sector.”
Mecca of world junior tennis
In fact, half of the junior world ranking tournaments announced on the ITF website for Germany in 2023 will take place on Hessian soil: the aforementioned tournament in Frankfurt in the first week of January will be followed by an ITF tournament in Offenbach in the second. One of the absolute top events takes place here in April with the International HTV Junior Open: “Everything of distinction comes, Djokovic also played there,” says Otto about the Grade A competition organized by HTV , which turns the Rosenhöhe in Offenbach into a Mecca for junior world tennis once a year.
At the end of June, the talents finally gather at the ITF category 3 tournament in Bruchköbel. “It’s incredibly important to be able to compete at an international level in your immediate vicinity and to be able to collect points,” says Otto. The Frankfurt U-18 newcomer Hanu Patel, for example, traveled to an ITF tournament in Nepal in December. “You have to take a whole week for that, not everyone can do that,” says Otto. After all, most young players still went to school. With the wildcards that are available to them as organizers of youth tournaments, clubs and associations ensure that their talents do not go empty-handed in the hunt for experience and points for their own ITF ranking.
At the top of the German juniors in Hesse, tennis official Otto is one of Eintracht’s own-born Mihailo Milenkovic, who will be part of the second Bundesliga men’s squad for the first time in the new season, as well as Vincent Marysko. The 16-year-old won silver at the German U-16 Championships in 2022 and defeated Hanu Patel at the ITF tournament in Frankfurt on Thursday. You should also keep an eye on Bengt Reinhard, 15, from Fulda and of course on DTB squad player Tom Sickenberger (“maybe the best in Hesse”).
Among the women, Pauline Bruns, 17, from Bad Homburg is one of the promising talents, but she is struggling with injuries. Losses, overwork, final exams, friends – who makes it into the paid adult sector depends on many factors, says Otto: “If a player at that age drops out for half a year, it can be difficult to find the connection again.”
In addition to tournaments and talent, HTV Vice Michael Otto is also optimistic about the youngest membership figures. In 2022, the association again reported an increase of five percent compared to the previous year to 134,311 members in 726 clubs. While other sports have suffered badly from the pandemic, the passion for the yellow felt ball seems to have even increased: “We were more of a profiteer because you can play tennis with enough distance,” Otto suspects.
The growth at the base could also be beneficial for peak performance, because: “The larger the pool of young talent, the more likely it is that one or the other will make it big.” Michael Otto summarizes: “Tennis is back in vogue.”
