Welcoming New Advertiser Junior Tennis Champions Center; One Singles Title, Three Doubles Titles for American Juniors Last Week on ITF Junior Circuit; ITF J4 Underway in Atlanta

I hope many of you have noticed the new advertiser this month on Zootennis.com: Junior Tennis Champions Center in College Park Maryland.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, IMG Academy, a longtime advertiser, decided not to renew for 2021, so I'm delighted to have another top junior development academy step in. I've been covering the ITF J1 in College Park since 2014, and before that I was familiar with JTCC due to Denis Kudla, Frances Tiafoe, Mitchell Frank and others training there, so its great to be partnering with them to get the word out on their many offerings, including the high performance program.

In addition, I want to take this opportunity thank my two other direct sponsors, OTZ Sports/EcoGrip and the John McEnroe Tennis Academy, for their continued support. They stuck with me throughout the pandemic, when much of the news I was posting in 2020 was not much more than canceled tournaments and dropped college teams. I can say, with the exception of Wimbledon this year, my schedule since this spring has been  back to normal, and I hope the resumption of my live coverage of events has been valuable to those reading this. That also means a return to significant travel expenses, so please take a moment to click on their ads to learn about those places and products that are contributing to offsetting that side of the ledger.  

I have resisted going the Patreon route, or another form of subscription model, for the basic reason that I want anyone who is interested in junior or college tennis information to have access to what I write, but there are still ways you can help, if you wish: exploring the offerings of my advertisers; ordering via the Tennis Warehouse link; making a donation via the Paypal link; purchasing a Recruiting Advantage subscription at Tennis Recruiting Network, where I continue to write regularly.

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Although there were no ITF J1s last week, there were 21 tournaments on the ITF Junior Circuit and Americans took home winners' trophies in three of them.

Maya Joint, a 15-year-old blue chip from Michigan, swept the titles at the J5 in Austria. Joint, the No. 3 seed, won her first singles title with five straight-sets victories, losing only 14 games in the process. In the final, she defeated unseeded Emma Leitner of Austria 6-0, 6-1. Joint won her second ITF Junior Circuit doubles title, partnering with Eszter Berenyi of Hungary. The top seeds defeated the No. 2 seeds Aneta Junova and Nicole Lukesova of the Czech Republic 6-4, 6-0 in the final. 

At the J4 in the Dominican Republic, No. 4 seeds Ria Bhakta and Esther Vyrlan won the girls doubles title, defeating No. 3 seeds Gabriela Rondon of Colombia and Masha Vrsalovic Gimenez of Bolivia 6-2, 7-5 in the final. Thirteen-year-old Les Petits As champion Mathilde Ngijol Carre of France won the girls singles title, her second in as many weeks. With her 6-2, 6-0 win over No. 7 seed Martina Marica of the US in the final, she has now won 16 straight matches since September.

At the J4 in North Vancouver Canada, Nicholas Godsick and John Kim captured the boys doubles title. The No. 1 seeds, Godsick and Kim defeated the unseeded Canadian team of Kuang Qing Xu and Junghee You 6-4, 6-4 in the final. 

After a week off, the ITF Junior Circuit resumes in the United States with the J4 in Atlanta.  Recent Southern California commit Emma Charney and Joseph Phillips are the top seeds, and both advanced with straight-sets victories in today's first round. No. 3 seed Ana Grubor of Canada was beaten 6-3, 6-4 by Ellee Dryer, and in the boys draw, Easter Bowl 14s champion Cooper Woestendick defeated No. 4 seed Jiayang Dong of Australia 6-4, 6-2.