Who is Catherine Bellis?
/Photo by: Yo Mariana
Tennis is a sport I grew up with. Every time I step on a court I cant help feeling butterflies and be excited and grateful toward my parents for teaching me and enjoying with me this wonderful sport with me during so many weekends.
How can I forget all the games I saw my mom winning and loosing with her group of friends from the "Avante" who even up to this day still get together to play. All the games with my dad in which my brother and I tried copying his passing shot and all those tennis lessons in which I could feel his look in every shot I took, always encouraging me and motivating me to be better.
I could continue writing about the sport forever, but what I want to share with you today, is this amazing tennis story with which the 2014 tennis open receives us this week. Today on the 4th day of the tournament, everyone is talking about Catherine Bellis and rightly so.
Catherine or "Cici" Bellis is only 15 years old! And she just won her first Grand Slam game against Dominika Cibulkova giving an amazing show and displaying a lot of charisma in a game they were not going to even broadcast. She is the youngest player since Anna Kournikova did it in 1996 to win a Grand Slam game. She won in 3 sets playing aggressively and with an outstanding confidence in the court. Totally contrasting the little girl I saw during her interview, I couldn’t help feel tenderness when I listened to her shaky and nervous voice and the excitement from winning that day.
You can tell she's here to stay, since she refused the $60,000 prize for winning that game, just so she could keep her amateur status. With that strategy, that heart and that charisma, Im sure we'll be hearing a lot from her in the years to come.
She plays again today against Zarina Diyas and when they interviewed her she didnt even know who she was playing because she never though she would win her first game. Yo Mariana will tune in for sure.
Click here to watch the game live directly from the US Open website.
UPDATE: She lost her second game on Thursday but played amazingly!
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