Who is leading the race to compete at the 2023 ITF Junior Finals?
Wimbledon finalist Yaroslav Demin and Alina Korneeva – the current top-ranked boy and girl on the planet – are leading the way in the ITF World Tennis Tour Junior Finals Qualification Rankings.
The ITF World Tennis Tour Junior Finals is a prestigious showpiece event which sees the world’s top eight boys and girls do battle at the Sichuan International Tennis Center in Chengdu, China.
The back catalogue of players to have competed at the ITF Junior Finals is highly impressive and reflects the significance to the tournament in respect of an individual’s development and its role within the ITF player pathway.
Grand Slam champions Marketa Vondrousova, Elena Rybakina, Sofia Kenin and Jelena Ostapenko have all competed in Chengdu, as have the likes of Casper Ruud, Holger Rune, Andrey Rublev, Taylor Fritz, Leylah Fernandez, Lorenzo Musetti, Marta Kostyuk and Camila Osorio.
The 2023 event, which will be staged for the first time since 2019 from 16-22 October, will again feature the best players aged 18-and-under from the past 12 months on the ITF World Tennis Tour Juniors.
The players currently winning the race in the ITF World Tennis Tour Junior Finals Qualification Rankings can be viewed here. In the boys’ draw, Demin is out in front followed by Mexico’s Rodrigo Pacheco and Cooper Williams of the United States.
After that dynamic trio comes recently crowned Wimbledon boys’ champion Henry Searle of Great Britain, Brazil’s Joao Fonseca, American Darwin Blanch, Bolivia’s Juan Carlos Prado Angelo and Yi Zhou of China, P.R.
For the girls, Korneeva is joined in the top eight by 2023 Wimbledon girls’ champion Clervie Ngounoue, Slovakia’s Renata Jamrichova and Lucciana Perez Alarcon of Peru.
The current top eight is completed by Japanese quartet Sayaka Ishii, Mayu Crossley, Sara Saito and Ena Koike although, like with the boys, there are many junior events and indeed the US Open for players to force their way into the Chengdu reckoning.
It is worth noting that if no Chinese player finishes in the top eight, the final place in each draw will be reserved for any Chinese player who finishes in the top 25. If no Chinese player finishes in the top 25, the eighth place will revert to the qualification rankings list.
Once in Chengdu, the winner of each event will earn 750 ranking points, which will boost their quest to finish the season as the year-end junior world No. 1. Furthermore, players will also benefit from travel grants to support their future progression to professional tennis.
The 2023 winner in both the boys’ and girls’ events will receive a minimum of $17,000 USD, with travel grants staggered at every level through to those in eighth position who will receive a minimum of $6,000 USD.