Preview: 2023 Roland Garros Junior Championships
The cream of the 2023 junior crop – the stars of tomorrow – will soon be arriving in Paris to grab a share of the clay-court limelight at the Roland Garros Junior Championships.
The second Junior Grand Slam of the season gets underway on Sunday and as well as performing alongside the pros of the game, junior players have the chance to enhance their reputations, lift silverware and scoop valuable ranking points.
Indeed, ranking points have added significance this season with the return of the ITF World Tennis Tour Junior Finals in Chengdu, which will take place at the Sichuan International Tennis Center from 16-22 October.
The Junior Finals showcase the best junior players on the ITF World Tennis Tour from the previous 12 months and consist of the top eight boys and girls in the ITF World Tennis Tour Junior Finals Qualification Rankings.
Both singles winners from January’s Australian Open Junior Championships, Belgium’s Alexander Blockx and Alina Korneeva, will take their respective places in the boys’ and girls’ draws at Roland Garros.
Blockx is the only previous Junior Grand Slam singles champion in the boys’ draw, although Cooper Williams and Learner Tien know the feeling of topping a Grand Slam podium after triumphing in the boys’ doubles in Melbourne.
Should Blockx win back-to-back Junior Grand Slam singles titles, he will become the first boy to do so since Tseng Chun Hsin of Chinese Taipei, who triumphed at Roland Garros and Wimbledon, in 2018.
The 18-year-old will be joined in the boys’ draw by a raft of talent including Mexico’s Rodrigo Pacheco, who this week surged to No. 1 in the ITF World Tennis Tour Junior Rankings following victory at J500 Milan.
By doing so, Pacheco made history by becoming the first player from the COTECC (Central American and Caribbean Tennis Confederation) region to reach the No. 1 spot since the junior rankings were combined in 2004.
Bulgaria’s Iliyan Radulov, who won his first professional event at M15 Pazardzhik earlier this month and has joined up with the Grand Slam Player Development Programme/ITF Touring Team, will also be looking to make his mark at a Junior Grand Slam.
In-form Yi Zhou of China, P.R., Serbia’s Branko Djuric, who has recorded more ITF World Tennis Tour Juniors match-wins this season than any other boy, and France’s Arthur Gea will all be on show at Roland Garros.
Yaroslav Demin, who was a member of Russia’s victorious Davis Cup Juniors team in 2021, Bolivia’s Juan Carlos Prado Angelo and Joao Fonseca of Brazil have also set their sights on Junior Grand Slam glory in Paris.
Like Blockx, junior world No. 5 Korneeva is the only player in the girls’ draw to have previously won a Junior Grand Slam singles title, with 2023 Australian Open doubles champions Federica Urgesi and Renata Jamrichova also in the Parisian mix.
With Korneeva on the trophy trail once again, she is bidding to become the first girl to top the singles podium at consecutive Junior Grand Slams since Belinda Bencic – an Olympic gold medallist at Tokyo 2020 – in 2013.
Japan’s Sara Saito, who has jumped to No. 2 in the ITF World Tennis Tour girls’ rankings this week, and Clervie Ngounoue – a Billie Jean King Cup Juniors champion with the United States in 2022 – are other leading contenders. Ngounoue also won the girls' doubles at the 2022 Australian Open alongside Diana Shnaider.
Kaitlin Quevedo of the United States, meanwhile, will head to Roland Garros in buoyant mood after claiming the biggest title of her career at J500 Milan on Sunday. Quevedo jumped to No. 6 in the junior rankings following her exploits in Milan.
The likes of Lucciana Perez Alarcon of Peru, Japanese duo Mayu Crossley and Sayaka Ishii, Slovakia’s Nina Vargova, Tereza Valentova of Czech Republic and Great Britain's Ella McDonald are also some of the higher-ranked girls in Paris.