The junior competition at the Grand Slams often provides a preview of what will take place in future Men’s and Women’s play.
Australia, in 1922, held the first major for Boys. Roland Garros and The Championships followed in 1947, and the inaugural US tournament took place in 1973.
The Girls didn’t compete at a Slam until 1930 when Australia again staged the initial event. The Championships was next up in 1947. Roland Garros was launched in 1953 and the US began in 1974, a year after the Boys were featured.
The US Boys’ Singles winners are tennis’ “Glitterati” … Among them Pat Cash of Australia was the 1982 champion before reaching the Men’s semifinals in 1984. Stefan Edberg won all the Junior majors in 1983 and went on to win the US Open in 1991 and ’92.
In 1990, Andrea Gaudenzi, after winning Roland Garros, became the only Italian to claim the US Boys’ title… now is Chairman of the ATP.
Andy Roddick, the Australia trophy winner, also annexed the US Boys’ championship in 2000 (destroying countryman Robbie Ginepri, 6-1, 6-3 on Court 10 at the facility that had yet to be reconfigured and named the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center). Three years later, Roddick became the last US Men’s Singles winner.
Andy Murray of Great Britain was the Boys’ champion in 2004 and the Men’s titlist eight years later. Taylor Fritz prevailed in 2015 and this year was a finalist to Jannik Sinner, the first Italian to win the Men’s championship.
The inaugural Girls’ tournament in 1974 was won by Ilana Kloss of South Africa who, in time, became Billie Jean King’s wife. Jennifer Capriati was the Roland Garros and US Girls’ champion in 1989, and a New York Women’s semifinalist in 1991, 2001, ’03, and ’04.
Six years after she was the 1992 US Open Girls’ champion, Lindsay Davenport won her country’s most cherished tennis trophy, the 1998 Women’s Singles.
In 2001, I went to one of the back courts at the National Tennis Center to watch Marion Bartoli play. It was my first Bartoli experience but there had been so much talk about her game, I didn’t want to miss the performance. A slip of a competitor, she used a Babolat racquet to wallop two-handed shots through, or deftly angle them off the court. She further defied convention, standing a few steps behind the service line and short hopping returns into play. When it came to serving, she seemed to be collecting her nerve to begin the service motion. Yet facing Svetlana Kuznetsova, the 16-year-old who would finish the year as the International Tennis Federation Girls’ Champion, Bartoli would not be denied. She won a dramatic 4-6, 6-3, 6-4 contest… It was a memorable introduction to the French talent who would turn 17 in October…
One of my most vivid 2005 US Open recollections is visiting Victoria Azarenka after the Australian Junior Girls’ winner captured the US Girls’ title, downing Alexa Glatch of Newport Beach, California, 6-3, 6-4. Azarenka, whose poise in the “I just won a Slam but have to talk with journalists standing in the Media Center hallway next to a trashcan because there were no interview rooms available”, evidenced what she would become… a Women’s Singles finalist in New York in 2012, ’13, and 2020.
In 2009, Heather Watson earned the US Open Girls’ championship, and in 2024 Mika Stojsavljevic became the second performer from Great Britain to take the trophy home. She will not turn 16 until December and became the youngest winner since Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova in 2006, who was also 15. Unseeded Stojsavljevic defeated Wakana Sonobe of Japan, the No. 7 seed, 6-4, 6-4 for the title.
In the Boys’ singles, Rafael Jódar became the third Spanish player in the last four years to win the US Open Boys’ title. Seeded No. 12, the 17-year-old downed No. 1 seed Nicolai Budkov Kjaer of Norway, 2-6, 6-2, 7-6. And though he wasn’t named for him, Jódar’s favorite player is the legendary Rafael Nadal.
This year was the 42nd US Open Boy’s Junior Doubles Championships. Top seeds Maxim Mrva of the Czech Republic and Rei Sakamoto of Japan edged unseeded team Denis Petak, also from the Czech Republic, and Flynn Thomas of Switzerland, 7-5, 7-6 for the 2024 Boys’ crown.
The all-star cast of past winners since 1982 includes Canadian combinations Sébastien Leblanc and Greg Rusedski (before he became British) in 1990 and Félix Auger-Aliassime and Denis Shapovalov in 2015. Sandwiched in between are Bob and Mike Bryan of the US in 1996, Nicolás Massú and Fernando González of Chile the next year and Julien Benneteau and Nicholas Mahut of France in 1999. All of these players have had distinguished doubles careers on the tour, at the majors and in Davis Cup competition.
The US Open Girls’ Doubles also came into being in 1982… then Meredith McGrath took ownership of the competition, winning with US partner Kimberly Po in 1987 and ’88; and Capriati in ’89.
McGrath and Po attended Stanford and UCLA respectively. In fact, McGrath teamed with Teri Whitlinger in 1990 to compile a 26-0 record for the season and won the NCAA Women’s Doubles Championship. The next year, Po was an NCAA Doubles finalist with Stella Sampras, who now as Sampras Webster, is the Women’s Tennis coach at her alma mater.
Tímea Babos of Hungary and Sloane Stephens of the US, who didn’t play Australia, completed a “Three Sweep” winning Roland Garros, The Championships and the US Open in 2011. The next year Taylor Townsend accomplished a personal “Three Sweep” partnering Gabrielle Andrew of the US to trophies in Australia and in New York and Genie Bouchard of Canada at The Championships. Two years after Babos-Stephens’ success, Czech Republic pair Barbora Krejčíková and Kateřina Siniaková duplicated their “Three-Peat”.
This year university freshman Malak El Allami of Colombia University (who is from Casablanca, Morocco) and Emily Sartz-Lunde of the University of Michigan (and calls Oslo, Norway home) were the US Open Girls’ Doubles story. In a final of unseeded teams, they slipped past 16-year-old tandem, Julie Paštiková of the Czech Republic and Julia Stusek of Germany, 6-2, 4-6, 10-6.
Not only was El Allami the first player from her school to win a Grand Slam tennis title, she was also the first player from Morocco to realize a trophy at a major.
In the end, the US Open Junior Championships were exciting and entertaining… And set the stage for The Power Of Tennis that is to come.
Title photo of Rafael Jódar by US Open