I’m going to write a super short blog before I put together a much longer version in the next day or two.

In that blog I’ll try and envision how a junior in their last year of eligibility with minimal outside support (federations/sponsors etc), can make it as a pro.

Currently as it stands there is no teenagers in the ITF top 25 rankings. As a result you are continually seeing guys in their mid 20’s who have grinded away at the $15k events take up direct acceptance spots that the ITF rankings offer (5 spots total) in $25k events.

Often this is in place of guys of a similar age with a higher ATP ranking. It’s ridiculous and makes no sense. I’ll leave it there for now before I expand on this issue in another blog.

Finally there are techinally tournaments starting in January, but as these finish next month I’ll just post “end month” rankings tomorrow once I’ve seen them updated.

I’ve always been curious about the correlation between junior Major success and whether this translates into success as a senior.

As a result I decided that since Federer is the last active remaining junior Major champion, I’d look at every player since he won the boys Wimbledon title in 1998. I’ve stopped at 2013 as the guys in that age group are old enough to have won a Major. To go any further would arguably skew the data.

I’ve broken it down to a number of categories. How many have made it to world number 1? Who has won a senior Major? Has anyone failed to make the top 100? And a couple more. I’ve copied in the Wikipedia table below of all the junior Major winners and you’ll find the broken down statistics underneath that.

The Majors in the table below are in order from left to right with Australian to the US Open titles.

1) Who has won a senior Major? Roger Federer (20), Andy Roddick, Stanislas  Wawrinka (3), Andy Murray (3), Marin Cilic.

That gives us a total of 5 players and 8.77% of those who won junior titles then going on to win a senior Major.

2) How many world number 1’s have there been? Roger Federer, Andy Roddick and Andy Murray.

That’s a total of 3 players and 5.26%.

3) How many have made the top 10? Fernando Gonzalez, Roger Federer, David Nalbandian, Andy Roddick, Guillermo Coria, Jurgen Melzer, Janko Tipsarevic, Richard Gasquet, Marcos Baghdatis, Andy Murray, Stanislas Wawrinka, Gael Monfils, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Marin Cilic, Grigor Dimitrov

That’s a total of 15 players and 26.3%.

4) Who has failed to make the top 100? Julian Jeanpierre, Carlos Cuadrado, Roman Valent, Todd Reid, Florin Mergea, Alexander Sidorenko, Dusan Lodja, Brydan Klein, Uladizmir Ignatik, Yang Tsung-hua, Daniel Berta, Tiago Fernandes, Agustin Velotti, Luke Saville, Oliver Golding, Gianluigi Quinzi, Folio Peliwo.

That’s a total of 17 players and 29.82%.

5) How many have won an ATP title? Fernando Gonzalez, Roger Federer, David Nalbandian,  Guillermo Coria, Jurgen Melzer, Jarkko Nieminen, Janko Tipsarevic, Richard Gasquet, Marcos Baghdatis, Andy Murray, Stanislas Wawrinka, GaelMonfils, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Marin Cilic, Paul Henri-Mathieu, Nicolas Mahut, Gilles Muller, Jeremy Chardy, Martin Klizan, Grigor Dimitrov, Bernard Tomic, Borna Coric, Nick Kyrgios, Jiri Vesely, Martin Fucsovics

Total of 25 players and 43.9%.

The reality is that the incredibly dominant success of Federer, alongside the achievements of Nadal and Djokovic leaves you with data that will likely not be repeated in the future.

You could reasonably expect more junior Major winners to go on and win the senior Major titles and improve that % as you are highly unlikely to see a Nadal/Djokovic (two non-junior Major winners) combination take up 31 Majors (so far!), nor a 20 Major winning Federer.

The most surprising statistic to me in all this was that 29.82% of the winners failed to even make the top 100. That stat alone would suggest there’s still huge improvements needed, even if you reach the top of the pile at the junior level for a short while, in order to succeed as a professional.

We’re now just a few days away from the next boys junior Major winner but if spending way too much time doing this has taught me anything, it’s that we should have minimal expectations until they demonstrate they can do it on the pro circuit.

 

 

I am no writer, so if I’ve made any errors please let me know and I’ll correct them. Thank you if you’ve bothered to read this far!

I am looking forward to attending a number of smaller tournaments this year and will list those below. I am looking to write match reports, take photos and just generally bring more awareness to people of the sport at a level in which it often gets zero coverage.

I don’t expect many people will read this blog but if anyone does and they have recommendations of tournaments to see and visit please get in contact and let me know!

Currently I am due to attend tournaments in Shrewsbury and Glasgow. Shrewsbury is a $60k women’s event whilst Glasgow is a men’s/women’s event at the $25k level. I wanted to go to the Rennes CH at the end of the month but having just looked at the state of my passport I need a new one so we’ll have to see when that arrives.

I’m going to set myself a goal of completing a blog by Friday on junior tennis and will try do a blog twice a week on tennis related topics.

I’m finding it enjoyable writing and whilst I know I won’t get many people who read what I do, I intend to carry it on for the whole of 2019. I am saying and writing these things so I do not back out!

To say the changes have been confusing is an understatement. I’m going to use this blog post to attempt to make it clearer, whilst also highlighting the absurdities that now result from the new system.

I’m going to use the upcoming women’s $25k event in Hong Kong as my template.

The way the draws break down are as follows: the first 17 entrants get in via their WTA ranking; as the screenshot below shows.

No issues there, they are in based purely on their WTA ranking. Whilst the next 5 get in via the ITF rankings.

Lopatetska is a very highly thought of junior so I’ll put her to one side, but looking at the other four, you have a young unranked Croatian (WTA ranking anyway) and three other pros in their 20’s with pretty unremarkable records who now have direct entrance. I hope you’ll soon see my confusion with this shortly.

So far we’ve 22 players accounted for. Four more are eligible for wildcards, leaving 6 qualifying spots.

Qualifying itself is made up of 24 players, 20 who get in directly via their WTA ranking and four wildcards.

It’s at this point that the whole new rankings system becomes utterly absurd to me. Every single one of the 20 players in the qualifying draw has a better WTA ranking than the 5 ladies who get direct entrance via the ITF rankings.

If the Holy Grail is winning WTA points then it makes little sense to me to have 5 players taking up main draw spots from an inferior rankings system.

I accept that there has to be some element of transition otherwise the whole idea becomes obsolete, but is this really the best method? In the tournament above you’ve three 20 something year olds getting direct entrance via the ITF rankings and given the point of this new system is to help speed up progression for top junior talent surely this is evidence it doesn’t work? Particularly when there are younger players with a better WTA ranking who have to qualify?

Is this honestly better than the previous system? Can’t see it myself.

Ultimately I can’t help but feel that anyone who is currently ranked 400+ and has a poor ITF ranking will end up feeling confused and completely unsure of how best to schedule next year. They’ll want to keep a WTA ranking, but now know that if they’re playing badly dropping down to the $15k level is of absolutely no benefit; therefore what do you do?

The end result is going to see a lot of people squeezed out of the game in my personal opinion and I’m quite frankly at a loss to see how this really helps transitioning players through at a faster pace.

However I accept I may be wrong and if I am, feel free to explain why!

Welcome to my blog. I’m a huge tennis enthusiast and am aiming to fuse my personal life with my passion and invite you to join me on the journey.

I’ve long been a huge follower of tennis and am looking forward to a big year in 2019. I am intending to attend a number of tournaments across Europe, ranging from ATP main tour evens to low level Futures and will blog about my adventures along the way. I hope you enjoy it as much as I hope I will!