She’s the youngest player in the draw and is contesting her first Grand Slam, but that hasn’t stopped Victoria Jimenez Kasintseva from reaching the semifinals of the girls’ singles draw, upsetting No.2 seed Robin Montgomery 1-6 7-5 6-2 on Thursday.
MORE: All the results from Day 11 in Melbourne
The 14-year-old Jimenez had saved three match points in her third round against Melania Delai, and had enough fight left in her in the quarterfinals to claw her way back from a set down and oust Montgomery, who is the reigning Orange Bowl champion and is No.7 in the world junior rankings.
Hailing from the microstate of Andorra that has a population of 77,000 people, Jimenez is a multi-lingual talented lefty who picked up the sport in order to spend more time with her father, Joan Jimenez, a former ATP player who peaked at 505 in the world in 1999. Victoria was born in Andorra but spent three years living in Kentucky, USA, where her dad was working as a tennis pro.
“He never made me play tennis, I chose,” Victoria told ausopen.com.
“He told me many stories about his playing days. He was a bit crazy I think. He didn’t have somebody behind him and he wasn’t serious in his tennis and that’s why he’s there for me every day, he’s trying to make me not make his same errors.”
A popular ski destination located in the eastern Pyrenees, Andorra is no hotbed for tennis players like its neighboring countries of Spain and France.
“We are from a very small country, with very big difficulties to play tennis because we are a ski country. We have only one indoor court in the whole country,” says Joan.
“We had very difficult moments for practice, because we have to practice early in the morning because we didn’t have courts and traveling to Barcelona to have competitions. But I have a daughter that loves tennis, that has tennis in the blood and we are a family doing the best thing for her to be a good person, respect and the values, and she’s doing great.”
Victoria is based in Barcelona, where she trains and studies at her father’s academy. She speaks Catalan, Spanish, English, Russian and French and says languages are her favourite subjects to study.
“It’s really nice because Andorra is a super nice country. It’s small but it’s lovely. I’m really proud to be from there,” says the affable 14-year-old.
“I’m kind of the first tennis player [from there], so I would like to encourage Andorran tennis players to fight for it because I’m sure there’s a lot of people there that want to be living this dream. So I want to encourage them to get there, because I know somebody else can do it and maybe even better than me.”
In an all-lefty clash at Melbourne Park on Thursday, Montgomery raced to a 6-1, 5-5 lead before the match was suspended due to the heat. The American dropped serve upon resumption of play and the ninth-seeded Victoria held at love to take the set and force a decider.
Victoria broke in the third game of the final set and consolidated for a 3-1 advantage. Montgomery dropped serve again and her Andorran rival served out the match to book a spot in the semifinals after 108 minutes of play. She faces China’s No.13 seed Zhuoxuan Bai next.
Joan believes his daughter developed her fighting spirit by gaining confidence from her success at a younger age. He says she had been winning national competitions in Spain against players three years her senior and plays with no pressure each time steps on the court.
“I don’t really know where I get it from,” says Victoria. “I’ve played a lot of matches where I was down and I won. I just try and try, because it gives me more security knowing that being down doesn’t mean that you lost. The only moment that you lost is when the last point that the other opponent wins. So just keep going and try and be positive.”
Her father, who is also her coach, added: “She went up from 2700 to be ranked 18 in the world, in one year. I think she has the ability to fight and get up in the difficult moments and she deserves it because she is a hard worker.
“She got involved in tennis because I didn’t have too much time to spend with her, and she wanted to spend some time with me on court, because it was difficult for me to stay away from work. She started enjoying tennis and I saw in her eyes that love for the sport.
“I think she’s doing good because we don’t put pressure on her. We try to let her push herself to the best level, but we never give importance to winning or losing. She’s very able to go on court and try her best, overcome herself, and that’s why she is 14 and is able to handle these situations.”
She probably gets it from her idols, who are renowned for their fighting abilities.
“I’m inspired by Rafael Nadal, he is just a super fighter, I don’t know how he does that, he is incredible. And I really like Petra Kvitova. I like lefties,” she says with a smile.
Victoria isn’t looking too far ahead, and is doing a good job at staying focused on the task at hand. When she’s asked about 15-year-old Coco Gauff – who is already in the top 100 on the women’s circuit, has won a WTA title and made the fourth round at Wimbledon and the Australian Open – Victoria insists the American’s accomplishments have no bearing on her own expectations or her own path.
“There is only one Coco Gauff. She is incredible, she has an incredible game, an incredible mentality,” she says.
“It has to be so much pressure being up there for her, she is unique. I’m just trying to go slow, I don’t want to believe [I can do what she has done] because right now I’m in this level and I don’t want to pressure myself because that’s not how you get there. I want to go step by step.”
The other girls’ singles semifinal will feature Germany’s Alexandra Vecic and Poland’s Weronika Baszak.
In boys’ action, Latvian Karlis Ozolins had a big day, winning both his singles and doubles, to make the semis in the former, and the final in the latter. He is joined in the singles semifinal lineup by three Frenchmen.
French No.5 seed Arthur Cazaux upset American No.2 seed Martin Damm 3-6 6-3 7-6(4) to set up a last four showdown with Ozolins, while Timo Legout will face top-seeded Harold Mayot.