Almost nothing has stopped Alex Lanier lately. Crowned European junior singles champion at the end of August in Belgrade, the ASPTT Strasbourg international, named European hope of the year, achieved his best performance this week in a tournament on the world senior circuit, the Open du Canada in Calgary (Super 100), of which he will play the final this Sunday.
To earn the right, the Strasbourg resident, already winner in 2021 of three lower-level international Opens for seniors when he was only 17 years old (Lithuania, Estonia and Italy), achieved two unprecedented feats in his young career. : Defeat two residents of the planetary Top 50.
On the night of Friday to Saturday, he masterfully defeated Brazilian Ygor Coelho, No. 47 and seeded No. 6 (21-8, 21-19) in the quarter-finals. Then on his way, he dismissed Saturday shortly before midnight in the semi-finals the Mulhousien Arnaud Merklé, n°45 and seeded 4, whom he thus deprived of his first Super 100 final. ‘he had to recognize the superiority of the 2021 French champion, also European junior champion (in 2018), during their three previous meetings, precisely in 2021 at the Slovenia Open, the Danish Masters and the ” France” from Besancon.
The Japanese threat
The quadruple European youth champion – a record – offered his first success against his eldest from Red Star after a Homeric half that he won on the wire after 1h21 of a high-intensity duel ( 26-24, 16-21, 21-19). But if he wants to add the Canadian Super 100 to his list, he will have to put down in his Sunday final the Japanese Takuma Obayashi, ”only” 175ebut successively falling seeded 7, 1 and 3, which says a lot about the difficulty of the task awaiting the hopeful postman.
For his part, before his narrow elimination against his junior from the France team, Arnaud Merklé had to work to overcome in the quarters of the Canadian Jason Anthony Ho-Shue, 53e and seeded 5, previously winner of their only opposition at the Belgian Open in 2019. The Haut-Rhinois had struggled to start the machine, but, once it started, had left only crumbs to his opponent (14-21, 21-12, 21-6).
