ITF

ITFWorld // AUTUMN 2019 2 9 A LITTLE OVER THREE YEARS AGO, PUERTO RICO'S LAUREN ANZALOTTA KYNOCH WAS ATTENDING THE US OPEN AS A GUEST OF compatriot Gigi Fernandez and hunting for selfies like any other starstruck fan. The teenager posed for photographs with the likes of Serena Williams, Juan Martin del Potro, Simona Halep, Dominic Thiem and Gael Monfils at the players' lunch before catching a glimpse of her idols on court. Fast-forward to the present day and the 16-year-old is fresh from her maiden appearance at Flushing Meadows in September where she navigated qualifying for the US Open Junior Tennis Championships before falling to Bai Zhuoxuan in the first round. Taken at face value, that is perhaps nothing to write home about, but the tale is elevated when considering Lauren's backstory and the events over recent years which have come to shape her life and career. It has been some journey to this point – one tinged with the devastation of Hurricane Maria, which ravaged her native Puerto Rico in September 2017, but revived courtesy of a $25,000 grant received through the ITF Junior Player Grant Programme. To contextualise events, it is important to return to September 2017 when Lauren returned home from her training base in Maryland, USA for a series of tournaments in the region, for which she was seeded No. 1. As Lauren approached the tennis centre, however, the storm, which developed into a deadly category five hurricane and the worst natural disaster to ever affect Dominica, the US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, was closing in and she was turned away. Back at the family home in the Northern Coastal Plain, she joined her father David, mother and sister to ride out the tropical cyclone. "My brother wasn't there – he got lucky – but we were trying to prepare before it hit," Lauren told ITFWorld. The focus of the hurricane's wrath was centred on San Juan and the east of the island. "We were safe; the house got flooded, but it wasn't like we were in real danger," added Lauren – but in its wake, Puerto Rico was brought to its knees. "There was nothing there," mother Dina told ITFWorld. "We didn't have a phone. We didn't have electricity for 72 days. No money, no food, no gas." No way out, either. For six days Lauren and Dina were stranded in Puerto Rico before finally boarding a flight to mainland USA. "I remember when we got onto that flight – it was the first little bit of air conditioning we'd had in a week," Dina added. "As we were ascending, I looked down and the only way I can describe it is that it looked like God had taken a huge grass trimmer and whacked the island. Everything was down." Lauren added: "The most difficult part was probably not having water. The tennis courts where I used to train, they were pretty much all washed away. The light posts, the net posts, the fences were flattened." Former doubles world No. 1 and family friend Fernandez checked in to make sure they were all safe, and even offered help to find flights out of the country on a private jet. "Gigi is Lauren's mentor," Dina said. "She has been a great friend and a great help for us." Lauren has benefited from a $25,000 grant received through the ITF Junior Player Grant Programme Lauren with Serena Williams at the 2016 US Open ➝

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