Weishar delights home crowd at German Junior Open in Hamburg

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Weishar delights home crowd at German Junior Open in Hamburg

Maya Weishar delighted the home crowd at the German Junior Open with victory in the girls' U19 final at the Gold event at Sportwerk in Hamburg.

Weishar, who became ESF No.1 for the first time at the end of January, won her home title the hard way. She was forced to come from behind twice in her opening match against France's Ines Guyot, then came through a tough semi-final against 3/4 seed Rose Lucas-Marcuzzo in a fourth-game tiebreak on Saturday. The final also went deep - Weishar taking it in four (three of which also went to tiebreaks) against second seed Sofiia Zrazhevska of Poland.

The Stuttgart-based star, who travels to Wurzburg weekly to train with Germany's best ever player Simon Rosner, followed up her U17 win in the same tournament last year.

England's Yusuf Sheikh took the boys' U19 title after a scintillating final against Wales' in-form Ioan Sharpe. Sheikh had beaten top seed Leon Krysiak of Poland in the semi-finals before coming up against Sharpe, the winner of the recent Slovenian Junior Open. Sheikh, from Essex, took the honours against his fellow Brit 6-11, 11-6, 13-11, 15-13.

The trip from Spain was a very successful one for Oriol Salvia Ripoll as the ESF U17 No.6 overcame Japan's Shunsaku Kariyazono in four games. Elcke Mols of the Netherlands came out on top of a very healthy U17 girls' draw of 42 players. The 5/8 seed triumphed against Kristina Begeba of Austria in straight games in the final.

Watch all Sunday's finals here:

 

Fresh from his victory at the recent French Junior Open, Kuwait's Abdullah Ali topped the podium again by racing through the boys' U15 draw without dropping a game in Hamburg (in fact, no-one got more than six points off him a single game!) Ireland's Christian Dromgoole was his victim in the final 11-3, 11-2, 11-5.

Once again, ESF No.1 Ameerah Ismail was the victor in the girls' U15 category. So far this season, the Warwickshire player has won the Nordic, Polish and Czech Junior Open titles and she added the German title to her collection by beating Denmark's Camilla Thomsen 11-5, 11-1, 11-7.

The PSA World Tour could soon have another Farag to contend with after Qatar's Omar Farag claimed another notable result on the ESF junior circuit by winning the boys' U13 title against England's Kylen Calder in straight games. In the girls' U13, Poland claimed all four semi-final spots, with top seed Anna Jakubiec beating Nadia Badzik in four games in the final.

ESF German Junior Open 2024: full results and photos

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