Junior Davis Cup Preview:: ITF Tennis - Juniors

Jr. Davis Cup Preview:: ITF Tennis~~~
With the first day of Davis Cup behind us, it seems a good time to feature the Jr. Davis Cup competition preview, which begins next Tuesday. For those not familiar with its many incarnations, the Jr. Davis Cup is now the name for the 16 and under ITF world team event for boys. The girls competition is called Jr. Fed Cup. It is being played in Barcelona, on clay, again this year and is a 16 team round robin (hey, do you think there's any chance the Sr. Davis Cup could adopt something this compact and central?) to produce semifinalists. Spain is the defending champion for boys, Argentina for girls.

The preview makes a passing reference to the seeded teams, but information on the event in general is pretty scarce. The USTA High Performance website does contain a link called International Team Events now, but it isn't working. Just last month, I had to rely solely on reports from the ITF website for the 14 and under competition in the Czech Republic, and had to piece together draws and seeding information from written accounts.

I have no idea how teams are seeded for these competitions, but given the way the ITF doubles are done, I would imagine that if a country has the two highest ITF ranked 16-year-olds, as the U.S. does, in Donald Young (1) and Kellen Damico (28), it will be the top seed. (The other player on the U.S. team is Dennis Lajola, who is ranked 103). Australia actually has three 16-year-olds in the ITF Top 100, not two as the story says, but at the 34, 57 and 91 spots. Why France would be considered a favorite, with only one age-eligible player in the top 100, I'm not sure. As the story mentions Ecuador and COSAT, maybe the ITF factors into the rankings the ETA list, which does include three boys from France in the Top 30. With all this I don't mean to imply that I know who is going to win the Jr. Davis Cup. After all, Spain has one (1) player in the ITF Top 100, (he's age 17), none in the ETA Top 30, and yet they won the competition last year. As the Slovak Republic and Croatia have proven in the Senior version, Davis Cup is one unpredictable sporting event.