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Priska, Christopher give Indonesia glimpse of hope
Christopher Rungkat (JP/Jerry Adiguna)Indonesian tennis may not be in its best shape at the moment, but it is seeing what may be light at the end of the tunnel, as some players are stepping up their game at grand slams this year
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Christopher Rungkat (JP/Jerry Adiguna)
Indonesian tennis may not be in its best shape at the moment, but it is seeing what may be light at the end of the tunnel, as some players are stepping up their game at grand slams this year.
Priska Madelyn Nugroho has been gaining ground in the junior grand slams, while her senior and the country’s top player, Christopher Rungkat, has laid a stronger foundation for himself in doubles.
At this year’s Wimbledon tournament, the 16-year-old Priska reached her first slam’s quarterfinal in her England debut by defeating 10th seed Alexa Noel of the United States 7-6, 6-2 on Thursday evening Jakarta time. However, the quarterfinals is where her Wimbledon journey ended.
Priska was awarded the opportunity to join the Grand Slam Development Fund Touring Team — sponsored by the International Tennis Federation (ITF), which allowed her to train and compete along with other high-potential players since the clay season this year.
Priska enjoyed her first experience of competing at Wimbledon, which she called “unbelievable”.
“I played on a grass court like five years ago in Australia once. It’s not like my regular surface, but I really like it. It suits my playing style,” she said in a video interview uploaded to the ITF’s twitter account, @ITF_Tennis.
Reaching the Wimbledon quarters was Priska’s best achievement in the slams, after she had made it to the round of 16 and round of 32 at the Australian Open and French Open, respectively, earlier this year.
Indonesia’s best achievement at the junior Wimbledon competition was in 2001, when Angelique “Angie” Widjadja won the event as the only Indonesian ever to do so. At the time, Angelique defeated former world number one Dinara Safina of Russia in the final. Angelique no longer plays competitive tennis.
Priska, who won the Under-14 Women Tennis Association (WTA) Future Stars in 2017, is on a mission to repeat Angelique’s success. In the last two months of touring with the grand slam development team, she made progress, especially on clay.
“I think I have to be more aggressive with my game,” she said. “There are not many players from Indonesia who compete at international tournament. They’re really supportive, [as] they are looking forward to my matches.”
Yayuk Basuki, who once resided at position 19 of the WTA tour world ranking, remains the only successful Indonesian player at Wimbledon by reaching the quarterfinals in 1997.
Priska was not the country’s sole fighter at Wimbledon this year, as her senior Christopher, also known as Christo, made his debut at the main draw of Wimbledon in the men’s doubles.
Partnering with Taiwanese Hsieh Cheng-peng, the brother of WTA player Hsieh Su-wei, Christopher unfortunately exited the tournament after losing 6-3, 6-4, 1-6, 2-6, 11-9 to 14th-seeded Jürgen Melzer and Oliver Marach of Austria.
In the mixed doubles, Christopher, pairing up with Japanese Shuko Aoyama, reached the second round, before being outclassed by Alicja Rosolska of Poland and Nikola Mektić of Croatia.
Christopher and Hsieh also qualified for the main draw of this year’s French Open, where they reached the second round. The Indonesian-Taiwanese pair has shown quite a bit of progress, reaching the final of the Sofia Open, an ATP 250 tournament, in February and winning four ATP challenger-level tournaments so far this year.
At Wimbledon, the 2018 Asian Games mixed doubles gold medalist voiced his despair over the lack of proper tennis facilities in Jakarta.
Christopher was referring to the transformation of tennis courts into baseball fields at the Gelora Bung Karno sports complex in light of the 2018 Asian Games, which was cohosted by Jakarta and Palembang of South Sumatra.
Despite a lack of financial support from the government, several Indonesian tennis players have gone their own way to pursue a professional career in the sport by focusing on playing in doubles.
Female players like Jessy Rompies and Beatrice Gumulya, who are of Christopher’s generation, have teamed up for several tournaments this year. The last tournament was the Swedish Open 125K series, where their journey ended in the quarterfinals last week.
In June, Jessy and Beatrice reached the semifinal in another 125K series tour, the Croatia Bol Open.
