Draw made for 2020 Roland Garros Junior Championships
It has been a long wait – 243 days to be precise – but tennis’s rising stars are finally primed for a return to the Grand Slam stage after today’s draw for the Roland Garros Junior Championships.
The Covid-19 pandemic resulted in the cancellation of Wimbledon, while there was no junior competition at this year’s US Open, meaning Paris will host the first Junior Grand Slam action since January’s Australian Open.
The world has changed considerably in the eight months since France’s Harold Mayot and Junior Grand Slam debutant Victoria Jimenez Kasintseva of Andorra were crowned boys’ and girls’ champions respectively in Melbourne.
Indeed, much about the 2020 Roland Garros tournament is unrecognisable compared to previous years, not least its staging in October. However, significant similarities remain, such as a gleaming trophy and a stack of ranking points being on offer for the top-performing boy and girl in next Saturday’s finals.
By virtue of their success at the Australian Open at the start of the year, Mayot and Jimenez Kasintseva enter the competition as the top-ranked players in the world and the No. 1 seeds in their respective draws.
Home favourite Mayot, who lost to Spain’s Alejandro Davidovich Fokina in the opening round of the Roland Garros main draw, will begin his quest for back-to-back Junior Grand Slam crowns against Brazil’s Bruno Oliveira. The last boy to win successive Junior Grand Slams was Chinese Taipei’s Tseng Chun Hsin in 2018.
Jimenez Kasintseva, meanwhile, was only 14 years of age when she triumphed at the Australian Open and will bid to become the first girl to claim consecutive Junior Grand Slam titles since current world No. 10 Belinda Bencic in 2014. Now 15, Jimenez Kasintseva faces French wild card Shanice Roignot in the first round.
Elsewhere in the boys’ draw, Frenchman and No. 2 seed Arthur Cazaux, who Mayot defeated in the Australian Open boys’ final, faces Switzerland’s Jerome Kym in round one.
Cazaux’s run to the final in Melbourne was part of a blistering run of form, which has seen the Montpellier-born 18-year-old win 24 of his last 28 matches at junior level dating back to JA Merida in November. Like Mayot, he also lost in the first round of the main draw in Paris, succumbing to Russia’s Aslan Karatsev.
Third seed Karlis Ozolins of Latvia, meanwhile, will face Argentina’s Juan Bautista Torres, while Brazil’s Natan Rodrigues, who is seeded No. 4 and is making his Roland Garros Junior Championships debut, goes head-to-head with Italian Samuel Vincent Ruggeri.
China’s Li Hanwen, a Grade A winner at Criciuma in February, is the fifth seed in the boys’ draw and will open his campaign against Belgium’s Romain Faucon.
In the girls’ draw, No. 2 seed Alexandra Eala of the Philippines will do battle with Hungary’s Natalia Szabanin. Eala failed to make the latter stages of the singles competition at the Australian Open in January but did walk away with doubles silverware after forming a southeast Asian power axis with Indonesia’s Priska Madelyn Nugroho.
Elsewhere, France’s Elsa Jacquemot, who finished third at the 2019 ITF Junior Finals in Chengdu and is seeded third here, begins her bid for glory against Slovenia’s Pia Lovric.
Fourth seed Polina Kudermetova of Russia, meanwhile, who won her maiden professional tournament at W15 Antalya in December, has been drawn against Belgium’s Sofia Costoulas.
Poland’s Weronika Baszak, the No. 5 seed, reached the Australian Open girls’ final only to be defeated by Jimenez Kasintseva, and her bid to go one better begins with a showdown with Czech Republic’s Darja Vidmanova.
Please visit www.itftennis.com for the full draw, results, articles and features from the 2020 Roland Garros Junior Championships, which start on Sunday, 4 October.