Tennis sensation Nicola Kuhn aims to put the experience of his 21,000-mile round trip to the Australian Open to good use - by soaring to new heights in his quest to become Spain's next Rafa Nadal.
And the Costa Blanca-based son of a German dad and Russian mum has a hunch that Wimbledon 2016 could be the tournament that launches him as a genuine Grand Slam contender of the future.
Nico, one of only two 15-year-olds in the world's Top 50 juniors,
celebrated his flying visit to the Southern Hemisphere's only Grand
Slam tournament by reaching the Junior Doubles quarter final in Melbourne.
That
unexpected success alongside Japan's top junior Toru Horie followed
a singles horror show in which Austrian-born Nico failed to progress beyond the
last 64 after being given the medical all-clear to compete following
a foot stress fracture.
“
Just being
there in Melbourne was a great experience but I definitely needed more preparation
time,'' he told me just hours after arriving back in Spain. “One
thing is for sure. Next year I will try to get there a week before the
tournament.''
In a ploy
designed to counter the effects of jet-lag, blond six-footer Kuhn –
a top pupil of former world No.1 Juan Carlos Ferrero's Equelite
Tennis Academy in Villena, near Valencia - stayed up all night at home in Torrevieja
immediately before boarding his flight from Madrid to Doha en route
to Australia.
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| DOUBLES DELIGHT: Nicola Kuhn (right) and Toru Horie |
The outcome
of the eat now, sleep later exercise was particularly hard to
swallow as, three days later, Nico was beaten by Canada's Jack
Mingjie Lin after powering into a commanding 4-1 first-set lead in
his opening match in Melbourne.
Lin went on
to hit a streak of sensational form to take the match 6-4 6-3 and the
lad from La Mata, who speaks Spanish, English, German and Russian
fluently, generously conceded: “You can't do a lot to break
someone's serve when your opponent is banging down three aces in his
service games.''
However,
Kuhn's overall game was about to come up with an unlikely ace of its
own – a winning doubles partnership with Horie.
“Playing
two matches in one day has been a bit too much physically in my
career so far,'' Nico admits. “Now I find I can handle that sort
of demand, so when Toru Horie suggested we partnered up for the
Australian Open, I thought 'why not?' We had a tremendous match
against each other in the Junior Davis Cup finals in October, when I
won after saving two match points, and we also get on pretty well
together.
“Our first
match was a little crazy,'' reflected Nico on the new Horie alliance.
“Basically we were both playing our own game but as things settled,
it seemed to work OK and we started to feel more like a team.''
The
first-round victory over Turkey's Irgi Kirkin and Aussie Alexei
Popyrin and a shock success against No.4 seeds Yousef Hossam and
Alberto Lim, took the unlikely lads into the last eight.
Kuhn and
Horie finally capitulated to the eventual champions, local heroes
Alex De Minaur and Blake Ellis, but Nico believes he and the
highly-ranked Horie are destined for more success as a doubles pair.
Kuhn, who
will be 16 next month, still has three more years' eligibility as a
Junior, though his involvement with the ITF circuit is likely to be
limited from now on as he pushes to climb the official Association of
Tennis Professsionals ladder.
“My target
is to be in ATP top 600 by the end of the year,'' he says, ''and
also hopefully to reach the Junior Top 10.''
Climbing 1400
places up the ATP ladder (he is currently ranked 2009) will probably
necessitate winning two Futures tournaments against adult
professional opposition.
However, he
already has enough ranking points to qualify for the main draw of all
four junior Grand Slams and sees this summer's Wimbledon as the
brightest ray of sunshine on the immediate horizon.
“The next
Grand Slam challenge is the French Open at Roland Garros but
Wimbledon is the one I am really looking forward to,'' he says. “I
think I can do well there, even though playing on grass will be a new
experience.''
More
immediate on the agenda is the passport that will finally enable Nico
to play under the flag of Spain, the country he has always regarded
as home. His parents Alfred and Rita moved to Torrevieja when he was
three months old and by his third birthday was already wielding his
first tennis racket, a gift from mum and dad.
As the
silverware mounted while still at junior school, the tennis
authorities in his father's homeland Germany offered to finance
Nico's rapidly increasing travel and equipment expenses – something
their cash-strapped Spanish counterparts could not afford. And for
the past four years Kaiser Kuhn has provided the main thrust of a
highly successful German junior team.
The pinnacle
was his record run of 11 successive singles victories in leading his
father's homeland to the Final of the Junior Davis Cup and winning
the tournament's Most Valuable Player award into the bargain.
That was to
be Nico's final team appearance for Germany pending the
long-anticipated arrival of the Spanish passport which will enable
him to switch his national allegiance to the country he has always
regarded as home.
Ironically,
Nico is due to play in an ATP Futures tournament in Murcia on the day
those passport formalities are scheduled for completion – adding
yet another complication to the mass of red tape he has had to endure
to be accepted on the international stage simply as El Nico, the
blond tennis kid from Torrevieja who made good.
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