Alicia Barnett

International Tennis Success for Alicia Barnett

With the aim of obtaining an under 18 world ranking, Alicia Barnett travelled to Kenya with Team Bath tennis academy to play in two International Tennis Federation (ITF) tournaments. In the first week, held in Mombasa, Alicia beat Kozub (Poland) 6.1, 6.4. Playing in 30C heat her second round win 6.2, 6.7, 6.2 was a very difficult match against the number 4 seed Shestakava (Ukraine) and lasted over 4 hours. This match took its toll and saw Alicia losing in the quarter finals to the eventual tournament winner Matteucci (Italy).

More success came in the doubles for Alicia and her partner, Brigit Folland when they won their first ITF tournament taking the final 6.4, 6.4.

The second tournament held in Nairobi saw further wins in singles and doubles and Alicia gained sufficient points to rise to 1083 in the world.

On returning to the UK Alicia played in the County Cup for Gloucestershire winning all her singles and doubles matches against East Scotland, Hereford & Worcester and Lincolnshire.  This helped Gloucestershire to win promotion.

A week later, Alicia flew to the Morocco ITF played on clay, and won both her qualifying matches and the first round of the main draw.  She eventually lost 5.7, 6.2, 5.7 in a very competitive match to a Swiss player.

Travelling directly from there to the Oslo ITF, Alicia began with a tough draw against the number 4 seed from Russia.  The first two games went against Alicia but she began then to find her range of shots and dominated the rest of the match, winning 6.4, 6.3 and playing some great tennis. The next 2 rounds were against a Norwegian and then a Swede, which resulted in very professional wins. The semi final was against a talented Swedish player, the girl could not cope with Alicia’s power and consistency and the Swede lost the first set 6.4, and subsequently retired injured.  This meant that after 6 weeks of tough tennis Alicia found herself not only with an international ranking but also in an ITF singles final, something which very few British players have achieved. The final was against Odegard of Norway who is 421 in the world.  Although Alicia fought for every point she lost the final 0.6, 2.6 to clearly the best player in the tournament.

Following these successes Alicia’s world ranking at under 18 has climbed to 600.