U.S. Open: Transplanted LIer Elysia Bolton wins first junior match
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Elysia Burton reacts to a winner against Yuki Naito during their U.S. Open first-round junior girls singles match on Sept. 4, 2017. Credit: Joseph D. Sullivan
Here’s an up-and-coming tennis player who Long Island can claim: 17-year-old Elysia Bolton. She has lived in Cold Spring Harbor for only the last 2 1⁄2 years. Before that, her family was 14 years in Chicago after moving from her birthplace of Sydney, Australia.
They came to the States because Bolton’s younger sister is wheelchair-bound since birth and the family found the disability act better here than in Australia. They moved from Chicago to New York when her mother changed jobs. (Her father is a retired policeman.)
Bolton took up tennis at 2. “I wanted to be Maria Sharapova,” she said. And Monday she won her first-round match in the U.S. Open junior tournament, beating Yuki Naito of Japan, 7-6 (4), 6-3. This is Bolton’s third Grand Slam junior event; she went out in the second round of both the French and Wimbledon earlier this year.
She is a high school senior, home schooled, and trains full-time at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. She is committed to UCLA on a tennis scholarship.
She is the last of three Long Islanders in the junior singles. Both Ryan Goetz of Greenlawn and Brian Shi of Jericho lost their first-round boys matches. — JOHN JEANSONNE
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