A little known tournament in northern Poland where champions lie in wait, long before they are celebrated, writes Patrick Ding.
Elena Rybakina vs. Rebecca Šramková in the Doha Round of 16 may seem, at first glance, a lopsided contest but it certainly wasn’t the case six years ago at the Bella Cup in Toruń, Poland, where 22-year-old Šramková secured her second career win over Rybakina, just as this ITF tournament was upgraded from W25 to W60.
The Bella Cup's clay bore witness to champions before they were crowned: Barbora Krejčíková, twice triumphant here, first in 2014, then in 2018. In that earlier run, she had toppled a young Maria Sakkari in the final— long before the Greek would ascend to world No. 3. I
n 2019, the draw featured Anhelina Kalinina and Alexandra Cadanțu-Ignatik, names that would later resurface in the narrative of Rybakina’s rise. Even her closest childhood friends — Amina Anshba and Anastasia Dețiuc — had once played here, their ambitions inscribed in the tournament’s history.
And then there’s the curious matter of Šramková’s own career. Šramková could scarcely imagine that her 2019 title-winning doubles partner Rebeka Masarova, after Spanish representation, would circle back to Switzerland. Or that 2017 runner-up Miriam Kolodziejová and her junior doubles partner Markéta Vondroušová -—once bound by the same side of the net—would follow such divergent paths: one a qualifier who would experience SW19’s grass just once, the other who would go on to capture perhaps the most coveted gem in the tennis world.
The main draw from those years also whispers the names of now-familiar figures: Marta Kostyuk, Kristína Kučová, Danka Kovinić, Magda Linette, Maja Chwalińska, Magdalena Fręch, Katarzyna Kawa, Katarzyna Piter, Isabella Siniaková. Each a point of light in the expanding constellation of the sport and a reminder that history is not only made by those at the top but those on the periphery too.
These narratives lie like scattered fragments of an unfinished puzzle, each piece separate yet hinting at an eventual whole. When the pandemic claimed the final Bella Cup, so too was the ritual of its sunlit afternoons, the rust-red courts framed by quiet ambition, the celebratory clink of Oranżada bottles after a hard-fought 8 or 15 ranking points. That awkward girl, muttering in frustration at her misfiring serve, might well be the ace queen of tomorrow. The pair locked in their petty squabbles over doubles tactics? Perhaps they will one day stand together as champions, their once-tense partnership now settled into the form of triumph. It is this, perhaps, that makes tennis such a compelling sport, and why I find myself drawn to these less “inconsequential” tournaments (though I must profess I think none of them ever is), the ones that don't make the headlines or the late-night sports reports. It’s not out of idle curiosity, but with a kind of reverent gaze, as I look at those draw sheets, wondering—perhaps a little too wistfully—whether that Eastern European teen, contorted with frustration over an errant net approach, will someday emerge from the dust, from the obscurity, to claim the greatness that seems almost inescapably promised to them.