Top Thai junior Wishaya gets a chance to slug it out with the best
Local top junior Wishaya Trongcharoenchaikul has been awarded a wild card into the US$631,530 ATP Thailand Open, which features three top-10 stars in Andy Murray, Tomas Berdych and defending champion Richard Gasquet.
The towering teenager, who stands 192cm, will be making his ATP debut in the event, which is due between September 21 and 29 at Impact Arena Muang Thong Thani.
“I’m quite excited to have this chance to compete in the biggest tournament in my career. There will be a lot of top players in this event and I will try to learn as much as I can from them,” said the 18-year-old junior world No 70.
The 12th grade student from Suphanburi Sports School represented Thailand in the Davis Cup in the Philippines this year and will reunite with Italian coach Alberto Castellani, who will fly from Italy next week to provide intensive training for the country’s biggest tennis competition.
“I worked with him briefly in Europe last year. He has a lot of experience and I hope he will help me get ready for the ATP Thailand,” added Wishaya, or “Junior” as he is called by friends.
The tournament also handed wild cards to junior world No 7 Laslo Djere of Serbia and South Korea’s Sun-Young Jeong, who won the privilege by winning the Toyota Asian Championships staged by the Lawn Tennis Association of Thailand in Bangkok last December.
Djere, 18, has been described as the “next Novak Djokovic”. The young Serb has won two Futures events so far this year as well as the prestigious Orange Bowl Championships in Florida in December 2012. Back in 2004 Djokovic was given a wild card into the Thailand Open before he began his ascent to the top of the world rankings, and expectations are high that Djere will be the next top-10 star from Serbia.
Apart from the London Olympics gold medallist and Wimbledon champion Murray, Czech big gun Berdych and US Open semi-finalist Gasquet, the Thailand Open will also be joined by elite players including No 11 Milos Raonic of Canada, last year’s quarter-finalist, former champion Gilles Simon of France, the resurgent Tommy Robredo of Spain, who has climbed back to the top 20 in his comeback from injury, the inform Russian world 20 Mikhail Youzhny, as well as crowd favourites Feliciano Lopez of Spain and Jarkko Nieminen of Finland. In total, the tournament will feature 28 players in the singles draw and 16 teams in the doubles.
Thai No 1 Danai Udomchoke and his close buddy Lu Yen-hsun of Taiwan will be given a wild card into the doubles, which they surprisingly won a year ago.
For the first time, host broadcaster TrueVisions has announced that it will be broadcasting the tournament in High Definition this year. Seven days’ of action will be shown on the network in Thailand and international markets around the globe will be taking the HD broadcast.
BEC-Tero, organiser of the event, said that tickets have sold quite well for the first time in several years. Fans can purchase the tickets at Thaiticketmajor outlets, online at www.thaiticketmajor.com or by calling (02) 262 3838.
