Draw made for 2023 Junior Championships, Wimbledon
Having topped the girls’ singles podium at both the Australian Open and Roland Garros, Alina Korneeva enters the Junior Championships, Wimbledon with the hand of history on her shoulder.
Should she triumph on the grass-courts of SW19, top seed Korneeva will become the first girl since Bulgaria’s Magdalena Maleeva in 1990 to win three Junior Grand Slam singles titles in the same season.
No girl, however, has ever won the opening three Junior Grand Slams of a campaign, although the feat has been achieved previously by Stefan Edberg in 1983 and Gael Monfils in 2004.
A place in the record books therefore beckons when the Junior Championships get underway on Saturday, and Korneeva will begin her latest bid for silverware against Morocco’s Aya El Aouni.
A potential curveball, however, is that the 16-year-old – the highest-ranked girl on the planet – is very much a stranger to grass, having never before competed on the surface.
Unlike the girls, there is no previous Junior Grand Slam singles winner in the boys’ draw although Juan Carlos Prado Angelo of Bolivia proved a trailblazer at Roland Garros last month.
The 18-year-old, who has been supported in his professional ambitions by the Grand Slam Player Development Programme having received a Player Grant in 2022, became the first Bolivian to reach a Grand Slam singles final in any event.
While Prado Angelo is yet to win a competitive match on grass and lost in the first round at this week’s J300 Roehampton, he remains one of the players to beat at the Junior Championships. He will draw swords with Great Britain’s Henry Searle in round one.
Focusing more widely on the girls’ event initially, No. 2 seed and two-time Junior Grand Slam doubles champion Clervie Ngounoue of the United States will go head-to-head with Japan’s Hayu Kinoshita for a place in round two.
Sara Saito, who is also from Japan, has been drawn to face American Mia Slama in the first round, while junior world No. 4 Lucciana Perez Alarcon will do battle with Amelie Smejkalova of Czech Republic in her opening match.
Perez Alarcon, who earlier this year received an ITF-administered Grand Slam Player Grant financed through the Grand Slam Player Development Programme, was another player to make history at Roland Garros.
The 18-year-old became the first Peruvian girl to reach a Junior Grand Slam singles final and will have designs on going one better this time around.
It is worth noting that seven of the last 10 girls to triumph at J300 Roehampton have proceeded to conquer all before them at the Junior Championships. Slovakia’s Renata Jamrichova and Tereza Valentova of Czech Republic will contest today’s J300 Roehampton girls' final.
It remains to be seen who enters Wimbledon with a gleaming new trophy although, when there, Jamrichova will face Romania’s Mara Gae, who is a member of the Grand Slam Player Development Programme/ITF Touring Team. Valentova, meanwhile, will play Great Britain’s Hannah Read.
It may well be worth keeping an eye on Nikola Bartunkova, who was part of the Czech Republic team, alongside Sara Bejlek and Brenda Fruhvirtova, which topped the podium at the 2021 Billie Jean King Cup Juniors Finals.
Bartunkova sealed her first professional title at W25 Santa Margherita di Pula in April and is currently ranked No. 348 in the WTA Rankings. The 17-year-old will go up against Argentina’s Luciana Moyano in round one.
In the boys’ draw, No. 2 seed Rodrigo Pacheco of Mexico, who last month topped the doubles podium at the Roland Garros Junior Championships alongside Yaroslav Demin, has been drawn against Great Britain’s Oliver Bonding in the first round.
Highly-rated Yi Zhou of China, meanwhile, will go up against Abel Forger of the Netherlands, while Cooper Williams of the United States has been pitched against Great British wild card Luca Pow.
Demin, meanwhile, faces Japan’s Hayato Matsuoka, while Iliyan Radulov of Bulgaria, who will compete with Brazil's Joao Fonseca in today's J300 Roehampton boys' final, has been drawn against France's Paul Barbier Gazeu.
The trend of boys winning J300 Roehampton before triumphing at the Junior Championships does not mirror that of the girls, although entering a Junior Grand Slam having lifted silverware only days before can be no bad thing.
It will be either Radulov or Fonseca who does. Whatever the outcome, the latter faces Jangjun Kim of the GSPDP/ITF Touring Team in round one when Wimbledon rolls around.