Junior Orange Bowl Begins Tuesday with International Players Named No. 1 Seeds; ITF and ATP Announce New Program for Junior Advancement; Crowder Wins Back-to-Back ITF J5s in Costa Rica

The 61st annual Junior Orange Bowl begins Tuesday at three sites in the Miami area, with the Girls 12s and Boys 14s at Crandon Park, the Girls 14s at the Biltmore and the Boys 12s at Salvadore Park.

The size of the qualifying draws was reduced this year and the tournament, with 128-player main draws, now is played over eight days, with the top and bottom halves of all but the Boys 12s split over Tuesday and Wednesday. The boys 12s, which is played on Har-Tru, will conclude Monday December 19, the other three finals will be played Tuesday December 20.

Below are the top eight seeds in each draw; the draws with match times can be found here. 

For a preview of the event, see this article from tournament press aide Harvey Fialkov.

BOYS 12s:
1. Taiki Takizawa, Australia

2. Tabb Tuck, USA
3. Tavish Pahwa, India

4. Tomas Laukys, USA
5. Jason Eigbedion, USA
6. Lucas Han, Australia
7. Ethan Domingo, Australia
8. Flynn Coventry-Searle, Australia

BOYS 14s:

1. Se Hyuk Cho, Korea

2. Matei Todoran, Romania

3. Ivan Ivanov, Bulgaria

4. Carel Ngounoue, USA

5. Vito Darderi, Italy

6. Jack Kennedy, USA

7. Kuan-Shou Chen, Taiwan

8. Keaton Hance, USA

GIRLS 12s:

1. Christina Lyutova, USA

2. Yeri Hong, Korea

3. Haniya Minhas, Pakistan

4. Yui Komada, Japan

5. Sun Xinran, China

6. Andeera Olariu, Romania

7. Maggie Sohns, USA

8. Hannah Ayrault, USA

GIRLS 14s:

1. Hannah Klugman, Great Britain

2. Yihan Qu, China

3. Emerson Jones, Australia

4. Adelina Lachinova, Latvia

5. Renee Alame, Australia

6. Ksenia Efremova, Russia

7. Luna Maria Cinalli, Argentina

8. Emiliia Kats, Russia

The ITF and ATP announced a new program to assist junior boys in the transition to professional tennis, with those who finish in the Top 30 of the ITF Junior rankings receiving what are being called Accelerator spots, not only in ITF $15,000 and $25,000 tournaments, but into ATP Challengers as well. There are also special considerations for junior slam winners and finalists; those can be found in the ATP release on the program.

The ITF's current program provides spots in $15,000 tournaments to Top 100 juniors until they turn 19; it's not clear from this ITF release whether that will program will continue, but I hope it will, as it has been popular and productive for many juniors trying to improve their ATP and WTA rankings.

This is a collaboration between the ATP and ITF; the WTA is not currently providing a similar program for its 125s, but unlike the ATP, which has lower level Challengers, all the women's tournaments at $100,000 prize money or less are under the jurisdiction of the ITF.

I'm surprised that this will take effect in 2023, rather than the start of 2024, because current juniors were not able to schedule for meeting these ranking goals. I believe the program will help draw better fields to the ITF's J1s and JAs next year, especially those at year-end, but it does seem like a sudden, if positive, change that top juniors were not able to prepare for.

With the Eddie Herr and Orange Bowl tournaments the past two weeks, I haven't been able to keep up with the lower level ITF tournaments going on (which will be changing their names to reflect their point totals beginning in 2023). 

While the majority of Americans were competing in the two big Florida events, the two J5s in Costa Rica produced four American singles titles.

Fifteen-year-old Riley Crowder won her second and third ITF Junior Circuit singles titles in the past two weeks in San Jose. The No. 3 seed in the first tournament, Crowder defeated No. 7 seed Zoya Chulak 6-3, 5-7, 6-4 in the final. Seeded No. 3 again last week, also in San Jose, Crowder beat No. 2 seed Jelena Vico of Canada 7-6(5), 7-6(3) in the final. 

Unseeded Holland Snell won the boys title two weeks ago, his first on the ITF Junior Circuit. The 17-year-old from Texas defeated No. 2 seed Humza Noor of Kansas 6-3, 3-6, 6-3 in the final.

Sixteen-year-old Calvin Wang of California won his first ITF Junior Circuit singles title last week, with the No. 8 seed defeating unseeded Victor Kimpel of Germany 6-1, 6-4. Wang and Snell had teamed up for the doubles title the previous week.