Americans Top Seeds in All Four Divisions as Junior Orange Bowl Begins Wednesday; Shang, Marcinko Named ITF Junior Champions; McDonald Named ATP Comeback Player of the Year; Lew Brewer's Orange Bowl Memories

The 60th Junior Orange Bowl begins Wednesday at three sites in the Miami area, with Americans dominating the list of top seeds.

The girls 12s and the boys 14s will be played at Key Biscayne's Crandon Park through the quarterfinals, while the girls 14s site is the Kerdyk Tennis Center at the Biltmore Hotel, which will be the host of the semifinals and finals of the girls 12s and 14s and the boys 14s. The boys 12s play on the Har-Tru courts of Salvadore Park in Coral Gables, so all their matches will be there. All draws are 128, with a backdraw, but no doubles. All draws can be found at the USTA's Play Tennis site.

The weather, which was so wet the last time this tournament was held in 2019, is forecast to be rainy again each of the first five days of the seven-day tournament.

The top eight seeds:

Girls 12s:
1. Christina Lyutova, USA
2. Krstina Penickova, USA
3. Lia Belibova, MDA
4. Anita Tu, USA
5. Ciara Harding, USA
6. Julieta Pareja, USA
7. Harper Stone, USA
8. Zaire Clarke, USA

Girls 14s:

1. Iva Jovic, USA
2. Rositsa Dencheva, BUL
3. Eva Oxford, USA
4. Shannon Lam, USA
5. Claire An, USA
6. Hannah Klugman, GBR
7. Katie Rolls, USA
8. Neus Torner Sensano, ESP

Boys 12s:
1. Teodor Davidov, USA
2. Navneet Raghuram, USA
3. Svit Suljic, SLO
4. Colin McPeek, USA
5. Jordan Lee, USA
6. Andrew Johnson, USA
7. Vihaan Reddy, USA
8. Jerrid Gaines, USA

Boys 14s:
1. Max Exsted, USA
2. Timofey Derepasko, RUS
3. Darwin Blanch, USA
4. Nicholas Patrick, USA
5. Alejandro Arcila, COL
6. Calvin Baierl, USA
7. Boxiong Zhang, CHN
8. Maximus Dussault, USA

The International Tennis Federation announced today that Juncheng Jerry Shang of China and Petra Marcinko of Croatia are the 2021 ITF World Junior Champions after finishing atop the ranking list after last week's tournaments, the final ITF junior events of the year.  Both are the first ITF World Junior Champions from their countries. See this article from the ITF for more on their results from 2021.

Former UCLA star Mackenzie McDonald was named the ATP's Comeback Player of the Year today, with the 2016 NCAA singles and doubles champion rebounding from hamstring surgery in June of 2019 to a spot in the ATP Top 60 now. For more on McDonald's road back from injury, see this ATP article. 

Following the retirement announcement Sunday of USTA Director of Junior Competition Lew Brewer, comes this article from the USTA about his 23 years as the Orange Bowl tournament director. Brewer reminisces about past champions and his favorite years.