Preview: 2023 ITF Beach Tennis World Championships
The ITF Beach Tennis World Championships will see the best in beach fight to be crowned world champion when play gets underway today.
The women’s draw will see the current world No. 1s and two-time defending champions Giulia Gasparri and Ninny Valentini open up against former world No. 1 and world champion Joana Cortez.
Vitoria Marchezini and Sophia Chow will feel confident of a deep run here despite landing in the defending champions’ half of the draw after narrowly missing out on last week’s Gran Canaria title in their first tournament together.
Neither are strangers to success on the big stages with Marchezini a former Sand Series champion in Brasilia and Chow a BT400 winner last year in Marechal Deodoro.
Whilst Chow is yet to post a win against Gasparri and Valentini, Marchezini overcame match point (alongside Rafaella Miiller) to take the opening match in last year’s ITF Beach Tennis World Cup Final against the Italians in one of the matches of the season to raise the roof off the Praia de Copacabana. She will have to do the same with Chow to make this year’s World Championship Final for the first time.
Gran Canaria Classic Champions Rafaella Miiller and Patricia Diaz will look to continue their strong form and turn their back-to-back runner-up World Championship finishes into victory and are again slated for a semi-final showdown with second seeds Sofia Cimatti and Nicole Nobile for the third year in a row, after their rain-interrupted semi-final victory in 2021 followed by an epic 0-6 match tie-break comeback last year.
On the men’s side, world No. 1s and defending champions Antomi Ramos and Michele Cappelletti find themselves in a tricky top quarter, with Doriano Beccaccioli and Tommaso Giovannini waiting for them should they navigate their opening two matches.
The Italian duo are fresh off their Sand Series Gran Canaria Classic title but have a tricky opener themselves against Hugo Paronetto Russo and Gabriel Santos.
Russo and Santos recently had a thrilling run to the BT400 Pure Beach final, where they eked out two match tie-breaks in the quarter-finals and semi-finals before narrowly losing to Nicolas Gianotti and Mattia Spoto, 10-8, in a match tiebreak after taking the opening set.
Gianotti and Spoto, last year’s runners-up, will look to go one better this year but will be wary of former world No. 1s Marco Garavini and Luca Cramarossa, who may be waiting for them in round two.
Garavini and Cramarossa enjoyed a solid run to the last eight of last week’s Sand Series where they took out Ramon Guedez and Carlos Vigon in their opening match. The Venezuelans had fallen just short in their previous tournament at the BT400 Balneário Camboriú, holding match point before falling to Giovanni Cariani and Gustavo Russo.
The bottom half is anchored by second seeds Nikita Burmakin and Andre Baran, who open against qualifiers Peter Campedelli and Giacomo Gabellini.
Campedelli is no stranger to the big stage having been part of the winning Italian junior team at last year’s ITF Beach Tennis World Cup.
On the draw, Burmakin commented that “there is always such a high level of competition at this Championship from the first round… we will treat every match like it is the final”.
On the week ahead, former champion Giovannini said: “I remember the emotion of the victory in 2021 in Terracina. It was one of the greatest victories of my career”, further adding “Cesenatico is very close to my home, a lot of my friends will be here supporting me this week."
An international live stream from the quarter-finals will be available in selected countries and on the ITF Youtube Channel and Facebook Page.