With the dust barely having time to settle on the team event the individual junior championship got under way in Tallinn to find the best players in Europe across all five disciplines.
Denmark’s Freja Ravn had little difficulty coming back on court just two hours after losing the team final easing through her first round of mixed alongside Rasmus Espersen. Kenji Lovang was also back on court within hours of winning the crucial point for France in the men’s doubles in the team event. Lovang partnered Maxime Briot to a two set win showing no signs of a gold medal hangover in the process.
After a break of a few days after the team group stages many of the smaller European nations were involved on day one in Tallinn. Lowri Hart (pictured below) from Wales got her women’s singles off to the perfect start beating Ioana Grecea in two games. The Romanian clearly feeling the effect of an injury sustained during the group stages of the team competition.
The biggest upset of the day came late in the evening as fifth seeded women’s doubles pair Tereza Svabikova and Vivien Sandorhazi crashed out to Poles Laura Bujak and Anna Duda.
- We cannot believe this win. We were very strong in defence and took our chances to win. We did not panic and stayed calm and are so happy now to be in the next round.
The host nation had a pretty poor return with only one win from four first round matches. Karl Kert with the only success for Estonia as he beat Nicolas Rudolf of Austria 21-13 21-11
Fresh from their bronze medal performances in the team event Emma Moszczynski and Jule Petrikowski breezed past Slovenia’s Brajkovic and Vracar in round one of the women’s doubles followed shortly by Russian bronze medallists Shapovalova and Kurdyukova.