Preview: Juniors primed for 2023 with Australian Open fast approaching
January is the time of year when anything seems possible. The new season is only just underway and there is a blank canvas for aspiring players to assert themselves on the global stage and make a powerful statement of intent.
There were a mere 22 days between the final ITF World Tennis Tour Juniors event of last year and the action, which was triggered by tournaments in India, Germany, Belgium and Sweden, firing up again in 2023.
As in the world of professional tennis, no sooner has the new junior season started then the first major test of form, fitness and work done in the off-season beckons in the form of the Australian Open in Melbourne.
The Australian Open presents the opportunity for the cream of the junior crop to not only claim Junior Grand Slam silverware but also play some enterprising tennis, lay down a marker and set the tone for the year ahead.
In junior tennis, this period tends to be dominated by a new band of would-be contenders, with a host of the previous season’s competitors progressing along the ITF player pathway to the professional arena.
Some of these players will be well-known already but, if not, a key place to run the rule over them is the Victorian town of Traralgon, where the traditional warm-up for the Australian Open Junior Championships takes place.
With a new grading structure in place, J300 Traralgon, formerly a J1 event on the ITF World Tennis Tour Juniors, kickstarts the Australian swing and gets underway on Friday 13 January.
As with most junior competitions, the list of past winners at Traralgon is impressive with the likes of Roger Federer, Iga Swiatek, Alexander Zverev, Nick Kyrgios and Monica Puig all previous singles champions.
While success at Traralgon is no guarantee of Australian Open joy, there have been five winners in the past decade who have proceeded to top the podium at Melbourne Park.
Within that number are Grand Slam finalists Zverev and Kyrgios, while Vera Lapko, Liang En Shuo and Clara Tauson have done likewise on the girls’ side.
But the bigger prize in terms of prestige and ranking points is most certainly the Australian Open Junior Championships, which returned 12 months ago after a two-year Covid-induced absence.
Croatia’s Petra Marcinko and Bruno Kuzuhara of the United States were the 2022 singles winners at the Australian Open Junior Championships, and both have had promising results within their professional careers since.
Marcinko, in particular, has thrived, clinching three ITF World Tennis Tour titles last season, including a career-best triumph at October’s W80 Poitiers. The 17-year-old has most certainly used her Junior Grand Slam victory as a launchpad for the next stage of her tennis journey.
It is also worth noting that the likes of Sebastian Korda, Coco Gauff, Holger Rune, Lorenzo Musetti and Leylah Fernandez, as well as Swiatek, have all been crowned Junior Grand Slam champions within the past five years.
Such status now beckons for the class of 2023, with a host of players bidding to seal a commanding start to the season as well as a potential catalyst for the remainder of their careers. In short, following a record-breaking year last season, the ITF World Tennis Tour Juniors is back.