Junior Orange Bowl Boys 14s Loses No. 2 and No. 4 Seeds Via Withdrawals, as First Round Concludes for Three Age Divisions; Bailly and Havlickova Named 2022 ITF World Junior Champions; Ram and Salisbury Named ITF Men's Doubles World Champions

©Colette Lewis 2022--
Coral Gables FL--

I spent a second day at the Boys 12s site at Salvadore Park for the second round of the Junior Orange Bowl today, taking the opportunity to put faces to names in the draws. It was another fantastic weather day in South Florida, although a bit breezier than yesterday, but the tournament officials are casting worried glances at the forecast for the weekend, with rain possible each day beginning Friday.

Today the bottom halves of the Girls 12s, Boys 14s and Girls 14s played their first round matches, with the first two at Crandon Park at Key Biscayne, and the latter at the Biltmore Tennis Center. The No. 2 seed in the G12s, Eddie Herr champion Yeri Hong of Korea, won her first round match over Boca Raton's Teaghan Jou An Keys 6-2, 6-2 and Eddie Herr G14s champion Yihan Qu of China, the No. 2 seed this week, defeated Micaela Moro of Peru 6-1, 7-6(4).

The bottom half of the boys draw was thrown into disarray with two late withdrawals: No. 2 seed Matei Torodan of Romania and No. 4 seed Carel Ngounoue of the United States. Lucky losers took their places, leaving No. 6 seed Jack Kennedy as the highest seed remaining in the Boys 14s bottom half after the first round. 

The No. 8 seed in the Girls 14s, Emiliia Kats of Russia, was also a late withdrawal. 

The second round will be played Thursday morning in the Boys and Girls 14s and the Girls 12s, while the third round of the Boys 12s begins at 11:30 a.m.

The full draws can be found here. See Harvey Fialkov's article on 1990 Roland Garros men's singles champion Andres Gomez, a fixture as a coach at the Junior Orange Bowl for years, for more on the challenges of having sons and nephews in professional tennis now, with such big shoes to fill.

The International Tennis Federation announced its world champions for 2022 yesterday, with the junior titles going to Gilles Bailly of Belgium, a finalist this year at Roland Garros and the US Open, and Lucie Havlickova of the Czech Republic, who won Roland Garros this year.

Bailly, who at 17, has another year of ITF junior eligibility, is the first Belgian male to be named an ITF World Champion in any category. For more on Bailly's accomplishments this year, see this article from the ITF Junior website.

Havlickova, also 17, is the first Czech girl to win the ITF World Junior Champion title since Barbora Strycova in 2002. She tells the ITF in this article, that her goal for 2023 is getting into slam qualifying and making it through to the main draw.

Rajeev Ram(Illinois) and Joe Salisbury(Memphis) were named ITF World Champions in men's doubles. 

The French Federation announced its reciprocal wild cards for the 2023 Australian Open, with 2019 ITF World Junior Champion Diane Parry, who is now 20 years old, receiving a wild card into the main draw of women's singles, and 18-year-old Luca Van Assche, the 2021 Roland Garros boys champion, receiving a main draw wild card in men's singles. Parry's WTA ranking is 109; Van Assche's ATP ranking is 137.