Assri eyes US Open spot
Posted on February 10, 2012, Friday
Mohd Assri Merzuki
KUCHING: Malaysia’s highest ranked junior player in ITF World Ranking Mohd Assri Merzuki has great potential to make it to the top of the ATP ranking but he needs time, hard work and support to progress.
“Assri has the potential to become an ATP top 100 player. He is an amazing doubles player and I can see him winning a big tournament one day,” said his coach from Romania, Doru Sorin Murariu.
According to Murariu, Assri is still young and the fact that he is so far away from his country, friends and family does not make his road to success any easier.
“When he presented his dream and goal for the year which is to play in the US Junior Open, I asked him twice if he was sure about reaching this goal.
He gave me this straightforward answer: “I want to play in the US Open, coach!.”
Saying that this was a very ambitious goal and not easy to reach, the coach put the belief in his charge and felt that Assri can achieve it.
“I will put all my effort and knowledge to support him to reach this goal,” said Murariu who has been coaching Assri for three and a half months in Bucharest, Romania and one year in Florida, USA.
Assri also underwent a month’s training stint at the Albert Portas High Performance Camp in Barcelona, Spain.
He is aiming to win his first ATP points in the singles and become the top 600 ATP doubles player, as well as continuing to improve the quality of his game and physical fitness.
Last year, Assri started with a ITF junior ranking of 800 in the singles after playing four tournaments, his ranking shot up to 234. He finished runner-up in a Group 4 event in Brunei, made the semis of the Group 4 event in Daytona Beach, USA, reached the final of the Group 5 event in the Dominican Republic and was the semi-finalist in the Group 4 event in Toronto, Canada.
In the ATP doubles tournaments, Assri teamed up with Gabriel Moraru of Romania to win the 10,000 Indian Harbour tournament in the US, reached the semi-final of the 10,000 Brasov event in Romania and was a finalist of the 15,000 Cluj event also in Romania.
He earned 39 valuable ATP points from these three tournaments to climb up to 809 in the ATP doubles ranking.
At the age of 16, he became the youngest and highest ATP ranked Malaysian player in the ATP doubles.
Apart from the above achievements, Assri said his baseline game is more consistent, and his forehand and net game had developed into his potent weapons.
“My physical shape, strength, power and speed are at the highest level since I started to play tennis and my endurance has developed to such a level that I can play matches for over three and a half hours without being exhausted for the next match,” said Assri.
Sarawak Lawn Tennis Association (SLTA) president Dato Patrick Liew, who has been a staunch supporter of Assri’s quest to become a top player, also strongly believes that Assri can qualify for the qualifying draw of the US Junior Open Grand Slam.
“But we want to target him to play in the main draw which needs an ATP ranking of between 50 and 100. We have planned for him to play in four ITF events this year to further improve his ranking from 234 to the top 100,” said Liew.
“If he can make it to the grand slam, it would be a first for Malaysia.”
Assri will play in the ITF Junior Group 4 events in Malacca and Brunei, and two ITF Junior Group 1 events in Kuching (Sarawak Chief Minister’s Cup) and in Manila, Philippines.
“We are beginning to see some “returns” from our investment of nearly RM500,000 on him since we discovered his talent in 2006. He has also developed into a well built player at 187cm tall and weighs 78kg,” added Liew.
Liew said SLTA had also helped to get a P1 status for Assri to study and play in the US.
