The newly crowned Junior champion of the Australian Open 2019 is a 16-year-old Lorenzo Musetti. And he can proudly say that he is the first Italian to win the trophy after four match-points and more than two hours on the court.
Lorenzo Musetti was born in 2002 in Carrara, Tuscany, where he attended the linguistic high school and trained in Tirrenia. The young man immediately demonstrated his innate ability and he was discovered by Filippo Volandri – Italian number one player from 2003 to 2007 – and subsequently trained by coach Simone Tartarini. Musetti started winning at the Grade 5 National Sport Park Open U18 tournament in 2016 and he never stopped. In 2017, he obtained the first clay title, in the Grade 4 9th Kenya International Junior Championships, where he also won the double team test with Lorenzo Rottoli.
In the same year, he won the third Under 18 title at Grade 2 Miedzynarodowy Turniej Juniorów o Puchar Slaska, held in Bytom, Poland. In April 2018, Musetti won the 43rd edition of the Trofeo Città di Firenze, and in May he won the sixth title of his fast career, the first in the Grade 1 category. In June, he reached the quarterfinals at Wimbledon and in September arrive in the final at the US Open where he lost to the Brazilian Thiago Seyboth Wild. He closed 2018 with an impressive fourth in the ITF Juniors ranking.
Musetti began 2019 in the best possible way conquering the Australian Open Junior trophy coming back from a set down to beat US Emilio Nava 4-6 6-2 7-6 (14-12). The proud first words with which he commented his latest success have been: “I worked hard to succeed in this result, I was hoping for it”.
Ilona Catani Scarlett