Tennis Influence

Junior tennis is almost as old as normal tennis but how did it come to be and should your kids be playing competitive tournaments? The biggest junior tour, the ITF junior tour was founded in 1977 and has grown since. During the year of its foundation, the tour only included 9 tournaments compared to its 350 tournaments in 2001. In the latest release of rankings, the ITF included 2563 boys players and 2542 girls contestants. Some of the top players on the tour have already established a presence on the pro circuit. The Serbian Olga Danilovic has won the doubles tournament at the age of 16 in the most recent edition of The Wimbledon Championships. ITF junior world number 1 Yibing Wu has an ATP ranking of 329. On top of his rank, he has also earned 80,000 dollars and has achieved a career-high ranking of 320. Miomir Kecmanovic, the ITF junior world number 5 and former world number 1 has a ranking of 294. He finished 2016 with a year-end world number 1 title on the ITF junior tour h

Mladenovic has been having an amazing run in these last couple of months, is she peaking? Or is this just the beginning? Today, she has just knocked out defending champ of the French Open, Roland Garros. I believe this is just the tip of the iceberg for the young french woman. Born in a town on the coast of northeastern France a tennis prodigy was born to a family of athletes. Her two year younger brother a professional soccer player and her dad a professional handball player, Kristina just had to have the genes of a natural athlete. She had a very successful junior career, the 24 year old won a junior French Open title and fell to Noppawan Lertcheewakarn in the finals of Wimbledon. She was already showing signs of being the most successful pro athlete in her family yet. After her junior days Mladenovic joined the ITF pro circuit and played there for 2 years until she received a wildcard into the prestigious Australian Open in 2009. She ended up losing in the first round t