It is definitely not a must nor for sure, however if you take a look at the presents stars you can see that most players have been great juniors from age 12 and onwards.
Most certainly among their national top level and in many occasions making good results in the big junior events such as Orange Bowl, Les Petits As and so on.
Our event Kungens Kanna and Drottningens Pris has a great history. As a prestigious Tennis Europe Junior event since 2011 and among the very elite events since 2012.
We can already see the impact on the biggest junior scenes from many of our past players. There are too many to mention them all but here are the top performances at the Junior Grand Slams.
Notable is that only 2-3 years after playing the top 14-year old events in the world they are already top in the world of junior tennis. A couple of example are the Russian duo and Drottningens Pris winner/runner-up and doubles winners Pervushina and Potapova both have already been ranked as world number 1 in 2016 after playing here in Stockholm 2014.
We’ve also had some former participants from our best Scandinavian junior players who has made an impact on the big scenes later on. Sweden’s Mikael Ymer has been as high as world number 3 and Wimbledon runner-up in 2015. Finland’s Patrik Niklas-Salminen made the semifinal at Wimbledon 2015 and Norway’s Casper Ruud became world number 1 ranked junior earlier this year and has made a couple of Grand Slam semifinals in doubles. Last week Malene Helgö (Norway) made the semifinals in doubles at Wimbledon.
World number 1 junior of today Stefanos Tsistsipas (GRE), played here in Stockholm twice (2011, 2012), already has four Future titles to his name and is ranked around 350 on ATP and on girls side we have Drottningens Pris winner from 2012, Olga Fridman (UKR) who is around 250 on the WTA ranking.
– Since the players of today have longer careers and that the top 100 is “ageing” it will be interesting to see if there actually will be a big transitions of generations within the next few years. It will be very interesting to keep following the progress of today’s junior elite, says Tournament Director Joe Beaton.
It feels like some of our former participants will have a good chance of dominating the world of junior tennis and the junior Grand Slams. For example the girl trio Potapova, Pervushina, Yastremska, can be fighting for Junior Grand Slam glory for some time if they chose to stay on the junior tour. On the boys side we could look for example after Serbian Miomir Kecamnovic or Israel’s Ysahi Oliel to fight for junior glory but there are many good and promising talents out there.