MELBOURNE, Jan. 27 (Xinhua) -- China's rising star Wu Yibing has suffered a minor setback on his journey to the main draw after going down 4-6, 6-3, 2-6 to Israel's Yshal Oliel in the Australian Open junior semifinal on Friday.
Oleil played superbly to deafen Wu early on, but the top seed in the Australian Open junior competition regained composure and concentration to put the world No. 12 junior on the back foot in the second set.
A hamstring injury, ill-disciplined play from a lack of concentration and vocal crowd cheering Oleil caused Wu to hesitate on key points when he should have been aggressive, giving the third set to the Israeli and halting his march to the final. Wu ended the match with 7 double faults and 41 unforced errors against the Israeli's 30 despite knocking over more winners.
"I (gave) my best, it's all I can do... (but) I feel this is tennis," Wu told reporters, describing how he felt after losing the match.
"I can't do whatever I want. If I want to win, I can win (but) it's not so easy. I'll be working hard to catch my next chance," Wu added.
Wu will now head to Spain with coach Nahun Garcia Sanchez to prepare for the Davis Cup while working out the kinks from Friday's loss as he pursues his goal to become China's best player and enter the top 100.
China's men's rankings aren't as high as might be expected -- Wu Di is ranked highest at 156.
Wu has put the low rankings down to a lack of confidence in their clutch moment play, something he's been working on with his Spanish coach over the past two years, but says more progress is needed.
"I think it's (also) a little lack of ambition (for the Chinese male players), but for him he wants to get to a higher level, so he's trying to manage how to do it," Sanchez, who is China's national junior boys coach, told Xinhua, reluctant to describe Wu's compatriots.
Sanchez went on to say that he does not know when Wu will manage to break into the top 100, but is confident it will happen eventually: "He wants to go for this, he wants to start thinking about that seriously (and) he's got assurance that he can reach the point that he can be on top."
The 17-year-old is currently world No. 931 in opens, but world No. 3 in the juniors. He intends to compete in more futures and challengers tournaments in 2017 in a bid to lift his world ranking for the 2018 season.
"I think it's better for me to prepare for next year," Wu said.
