America attracts talented Argentinean tennis player - Andrea Collarini
America not only has talent of its own but is also receiving talent from other countries. The 18 year old Andrea Collarini was born in New York, America, but by blood he is an Argentinean and grew up in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Throughout his childhood he was taught how to play tennis by his father and other tennis pros in Argentina.
Till the spring of this year, Collarini, had represented Argentina in all his junior tennis tournaments. He had grown up to become quite a talented player and just last year reached the high ranking of fifth in the junior world of tennis. In his career till then he had reached two semi-finals and one final at a junior professional level at $10,000 Future events in Argentina, Croatia and Spain.
To take his professional career as a tennis player to a higher level, Collarini decided to take advantage of his US Passport and shift to America for professional training, as America had more facilities as compared to those in Argentina. He had a coach hired by the United States Tennis Association (USTA) High Performance program.
They also offered him the opportunity to get full time training at the player-development headquarters in Boca Raton, Florida. This was a chance of a lifetime and Collarini was now thinking about himself more than his country and left Argentina to represent the United States of America.
The USTA were willing to be his sponsors at a very important part of the development of his career in tennis and will be proving the proper funds. Now that this was taken care of, all Collarini needed to worry about was working on his fitness and improving his game.
Tennis has become increasingly propular in Argentina. Ever since the Argentinean professional tennis player Juan Martin Del Potro defeated Roger Federer at the US Open last year in a raging battle 3-6 7-6 4-6 7-6 6-2, he has become a superstar in his country and all over the world of tennis. Del Potro managed to bring down Federer who had been winning at the US Open for five consecutive years; it was indeed an accomplishment. Fans were ecstatic at this victory, as this victory was a source of pride for the Argentinean nation.
Hence, when Andrea Collarini, who was expected to be the next Del Potro for Argentina, decided to switch his allegiances to America it angered the Argentina Tennis Federation.
“The federation felt that they had invested money in this guy and they have empty hands.” This was reported by Maximiliano Boso, who covered the story of Collarini’s shifting to America, for Argentina’s daily La Nacion.
But the young Collarini saw a brighter future for his profession in America, so it was no longer up to the Argentineans to stop him.
Recently, Collarini has made his way to the finals in the boys’ singles tournament at Roland Garros, where he has represented America. He upset the ninth-seeded Duilio Beretta of Peru 6-3 6-3 in the semi-finals and made his way to the final.
If he had won this final, he would have become the first American to have won the junior boys’ title at the French Open since John McEnroe in 1977. Unfortunately, Collarini was overrun by Agustin Velotti in the final 6-4 7-5 and failed to claim the title. But reaching the final has also been an accomplishment for Collarini and he knows that with time he will be able to do better.
Although, Collarini had been representing America in this tournament and had betrayed the hopes of Argentina, when he went for his interview with the press the South American reporters easily outnumbered the North American reporters. Looks like the South Americans still hope to win back the player they lost to the North.
America seems to be working quite hard on this potential tennis champion. Collarini has been training with Diego Moyano. Moyano has worked with the 1998 French Open champion Carlos Moya. He is not Collarini’s private coach though. The USTA has assigned a variety of coaches to Collarini so that he may get very thorough training.
Some of the USTA coaches he is working with are Jay Berger, Hugo Armando and Leo Azevedo. Collarini is not spending a single dollar on this training of his whereas he would have had to financially support himself if he was going to ask for training of this sort in Argentina.
It seems as though the Argentinean boy made a wise decision by coming to America in order to pursue his dream of becoming a professional tennis player. America sure does seem to be the land of opportunity.
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