Getting to the Top in Tennis is Tough!

ITF junior tournaments have their place in a promising junior tennis player’s pathway to the top. However one can get lost in the quest for rankings points. I have to comment again on ITF junior rankings and how inaccurate they can be and give no real indication where you sit really in the tennis world. One has to look deeper in the point’s race and how a player accumulated those remembering singles and doubles points combine to give you an individual ranking. Also take into account which side of the world you gained most of your points and how many ITF junior events did you play. There are many juniors around the world with not so high ITF rankings but are more talented than a lot that appear in the top 50.If your goal is to get a College scholarship a high ITF ranking will assure you get a highly ranked American College. National Bodies can also reward their players on reaching top 100 and can receive funding for their Junior ITF players. Just to show you how Mickey Mouse results can be in the Juniors I will give some examples. A New Zealand Junior earlier this week was reported to be the highest ranked junior in Australasia (102), and that in itself should send alarm bells ringing in Australia. Looking deeper into results is important when assessing current standings. Losses at the last 7 tournaments were to players ranked, 47, 125, 212, 78, 110, 550, and 479 with three of those losses to girls from Australasia. However it is good to see players such as this testing themselves overseas but I question whether it should be in Cairo Egypt and maybe should be Spain or the USA.

Another New Zealand Junior ranked 132 went into the u18 Boy’s Canadian World ranking tournament this week as top seed. Lost first round to a player from the USA ranked 691.

Jack Sock winner of the boys U18 US OPEN singles title went into this event unseeded. These results are common to a lot of Junior events my advice is don’t get too hung up on ITF rankings test yourself with Futures and Challengers if your potential is there to do this, choose your tournament program wisely , don’t look at points you could get but more on the strength of the tournament. If you are going to make it as a top pro tennis player you will survive playing stronger events , playing weaker events certainly will give you ranking points in the Junior ITF grade! will they transgress to the senior ranks? , I hardly think so!

Tennis is a job for pro players and for many the best they will do is hovering the 350-250 mark .In the real world if you held a Job and performed at this level for 5 years your boss should have fired you by now. If you were running as a business there is so many years of loss you can cope before you go under.
Getting to the top in Tennis is Tough!