It's always a treat for me to interview someone I've known for awhile. It's not just because they're familiar, but because a player I have watched for years has made it to a higher level and is winning national events. Gail Brodsky is one of those players.
The petite blonde (though she has grown quite a few inches this year) had played tournaments at the Port Washington Tennis Academy when her age was in the single digits. I still remember taking a picture of the 11 year old when she won our Summer Classic. These days, however, the winners' circle pictures of Gail are being taken at events like the Orange Bowl and the National Opens.
Fourteen year old Gail Brodsky celebrated the holidays of 2005 with a December to remember. Unseeded, she stormed through the Junior Orange Bowl draw before losing in the finals to Viktoriya Kamenskaya, the top-seed who hails from Gail's birth country of Russia. It was just a few weeks later that I sat down with her just before she took the women's singles title at the National Open Indoors. It was a great way to finish a year that also included representing the U.S. at the World Youth Cup Games, first place at a National Open & Teen Tennis in Great Britain; the finals at an ITF in Morocco; semifinals at the USTA National Claycourts (G18s); and playing at the US Open Junior Championships, where she won a round before losing to the No. 6 seed. She also has trophies from previous years at the National Hardcourts (14s), another National Open (16s), Eddie Herr Internationals (12s), Super National Claycourts (12s) and the Copper Bowl.
Gail Brodsky was born in the Ukraine, but raised in Brooklyn, New York. She has trained for the last year at the Weil Academy in California and has been traveling the globe since. For the year ending 2005 she played in nearly every USTA age division, as well as ITFs and WTAs, so she did not establish a high ranking in any one place, but that is about to change.
by Marcia Frost
