Martin Klizan Gives HEAD Team Elite its Second Boys Grand Slam Singles Title of 2006

Martin Klizan of the Slovak Republic captured the French Open Junior Boys’ Championship on Sunday, joining fellow Team Elite member Alexandre Sidorenko in the exclusive club of Grand Slam singles winners. France’s Sidorenko won the Australian Open in January. Klizan who will be 17 in July, had a difficult opening match playing in his first Grand Slam. Down a set, he needed to win a tiebreak to have a chance at a third set, but eventually the lefthander from Bratislava rallied past Emiliano Massa of Argentina 7-5 in the third. Once he met that challenge, Klizan played increasingly confident tennis with his Flexpoint Prestige MP, winning his next five matches in straight sets. By the time he reached the final on his favorite surface, the unseeded Klizan was unstoppable, defeating another unseeded player, Philip Bester of Canada, 6-3, 6-1, to become the first player from his country to win a junior Grand Slam singles title.

Three of the four boys semifinalists at Roland Garros are Team Elite members, with Thiemo De Bakker of the Netherlands and Romania’s Petru-Alexandru Luncanu also reaching the final four. In fact, with the points earned from his French Open victory, Klizan now moves into the third spot in the ITF World Rankings, giving HEAD Team Elite four of the Top Five and six of the Top Ten players on the list of the world’s best juniors.

In the boys’ doubles championships, Team Elite members Artur Chernov and Valery Rudnev of Russia reached the final, where they fell to Massa and Kei Nishikori of Japan 2-6, 6-1, 6-2. Chernov, using a Flexpoint Prestige MP and Rudnev, with his Flexpoint Radical, battled their way through the draw unseeded, and decisively defeated the second seeded team from Croatia in the semifinals before being overtaken in the final.

With the conclusion of the French Open, the tennis world now turns its attention to Great Britain and grass, where HEAD Team Elite members will once again join the quest for a Grand Slam title.