ABERDEEN player Joanna Henderson is preparing to team up with Wimbledon junior champion Laura Robson for Britain in the semi-finals of the world junior tennis finals in the Czech Republic tomorrow.

Along with Jessica Ren (Yorkshire), Henderson and Robson (Middlesex) are representing Britain in a group which includes Russia, Australia, Tunisia and Bolivia.

Sixteen teams are taking part in the event at Prostejov.

The British girls have never won the world junior event.

Matches started on Monday and having been seeded fourth, the GB girls have eased through their round-robin groups without losing a match.

They played their final group match against Bolivia and have won both singles matches. Joanna and Laura also played in the “dead” doubles rubber yesterday.

Today they will face a very strong Russian team in the semi-finals.

The British girls lost to the Russians in February in the final of the European Winter Cup competition in the deciding doubles match, so they hope to go one better today.

WIMBLEDON junior tennis champion Laura Robson has stayed out of the limelight since her girls’ singles win at Wimbledon

But one place could be seeing a bit more of the 14-year-old in the future – Old Trafford.

Melbourne-born Laura is a bit of a Manchester United fan and is planning a trip to watch her heroes when she’s not studying or playing.

Recent post’s have appeared on the web about just exactly which country Laura Robson was playing for in the Wimbledon 2008 junior final.

The 14-year-old, who is the first Briton to win a Wimbledon singles title for 24 years, was born in Australia but came to this country at the age of six.

But until as recently as February, she still did not have British citizenship and represented Australia in her tennis matches.

Laura became eligible for UK citizenship after her father Andrew, 48, obtained a British passport in February of this year. She and her father now both hold dual British and Australian nationality.

Quoted From The Telegraph

Accoring to a national newspaper Laura Robson’s final “outshined” the williams sister’s final

It was a slightly surreal day in SW19. The outstanding women’s match of the tournament was greeted on Centre Court with polite indifference while a scrap between a 14-year-old and a 16-year-old elicited a Mexican wave and chants of “Laura! Laura!”

Okay, the wave was quickly aborted and the chants fizzled out no sooner had they begun, but to be on Court No1 yesterday afternoon was to be present at the birth of a new outbreak of tennis hysteria.

Laura Swinging For Ball

No matter that the object of the crowd’s affections was born in Melbourne and only arrived in Britain at the age of six, via Singapore. Yesterday Laura Robson was pure English rose as she slugged it out in the final of the junior girls’ singles with Thailand’s Noppawan Lertcheewakarn – not so much a name as a hand of scrabble.

Securing a Court No1 ticket in the ballot for the second Saturday of Wimbledon is normally a bit of a short straw – so close and yet so far from the main action on Centre Court with the prospect of sitting through veteran doubles matches full of that unfunny tennis humour that is so peculiar to Wimbledon. In the hors d’oeuvre to the girls’ final yesterday, Henri Leconte even tried to extract a laugh by drinking loudly during a changeover. Hilarious.

But yesterday those clutching Court No1 tickets were the ones who had the last laugh, ooh-ing and aah-ing their way through 90 minutes of absorbing tennis before saluting the young starlet with a noisy standing ovation that began before Lertcheewakarn’s attempted return in the seventh game of the third set fell short of the net. It lasted a full four minutes.

Robson appeared shocked at the reception, hiding her face shyly behind her trophy and having to be persuaded by 1969 Wimbledon champion Ann Jones to take a lap of honour.

The raucous scenes were repeated outside on the grassy hill once colonised by Henmaniacs and annexed over the past fortnight by Murray followers.

When her match popped up on the giant TV screen following the conclusion of the Williams sisters’ final, many drifted away to the bars. But by the time Robson was crowned junior champion, the hill was full again and the Wimbledon public were celebrating a home win in every sense of the word, since Robson lives just a five-minute trot from the All England Club. From Henman Hill, to Murray Mount, to Robson Rock.

Her victory guarantees her a wild card entry into next year’s senior women’s tournament, and the evidence of her cool display yesterday suggests she will not be overawed by the hype that is bound to attend her.

She is also the real deal when it comes to the accuracy and power of her ground strokes, and she serves faster than you can say Lertcheewakarn. The contrast with the scenes on Centre Court could not have been starker as Venus and Serena Williams took the stage.

No one could deny the quality or indeed the ferocity of tennis on show as both sisters seemed determined to disprove Elena Dementieva’s remark that the identity of the winner would be a “family decision”. The trouble is, how do you engage in a sporting contest when, frankly, you couldn’t care less who wins?

“Come on Williams,” came one heckle halfway through the first set, which summed up the difficulty faced by the crowd. Who do you cheer for when two players are so similar in every facet, not just in their DNA? The neutral fan can usually find some excuse to form at least a temporary loyalty to a player – their style of play, their character, their underdog status, maybe even their dress sense.

Yesterday, it was hard to find anything to separate the sisters other than earrings, with Venus plumping for hoops while Serena had mini-chandeliers dangling from her lobes.

It was, to be fair, an exhibition of awe-inspiring power and athleticism, and there was none of the insipid play that marred their first Wimbledon final in 2002. Venus even managed a serve of 129mph, a record for a woman at Wimbledon, while Serena showed similar aggression in firing a bullet return straight at her sister’s body that Venus just managed to fend away with her racket.

But watching sport needs more that the commitment of two opponents to get the juices flowing. It needs a cause and it needs emotion, and it was Robson, not the Williams sisters, who supplied it.

Quoted from the telegraph

Its appers that Tim Henman was a major help to Laura , as we found out this week that the 14 year old was inspired by a meeting with Time in 2004.

The pair played doubles together at a promotional event at a London sports centre, and Robson’s mother, Kathy, was impressed by the trouble Henman took to encourage her daughter. “He was so good,” Mrs Robson recalled. “He kept high-fiving her after every good shot. It did wonders for her confidence.”

Henman was full of praise for the youngster at the weekend. “I didn’t have to put up with all that attention at the age of 14,” the BBC pundit said. “But Laura is a very self-assured girl and mature. She knows what it’s all about, and has real potential, but I think we just have to be patient.”

Robson will not be playing the junior tournament at the US Open but she is likely to appear at the Australian Open in the winter. Her schedule is being worked out by Robson’s coach, Martijn Bok, who is determined to follow a prudent course and not rush the young left-hander.

Robson’s minders have a difficult time ahead as they attempt to dampen down the excitement caused by her run to the title at Wimbledon, during which she defeated the No 1 seed, Melanie Oudin of the United States, in the second round, and the No 3 seed, Thailand’s Noppawan Lertcheewakarn, in the final.

 

Quote From The Telegraph

Following Laura’s win in the Junior Wimbledon champion ship , Laura has moved into the top 5 girls rank in the ITF Junior Rankings

Laura Robson has won the wimbledon junior title 2 sets to 1 (6-3, 3-6, 6-1) She is the first junior to win it in 24 years since Annabel Croft in 1984.