CLASS OF 2019: Part 1 – Big breakthroughs
The Class of 2019 series recognises those players who are successfully making the transition from their ITF World Tennis Tour Junior careers into the professional game. Part I focuses on two players whose rise has been meteoric – Coco Gauff of USA, and Italy’s Jannik Sinner.
This time last year, neither Coco Gauff nor Jannik Sinner were ranked inside the world’s top 750. Fast-forward 12 months, however, and the duo are the youngest players in the WTA and ATP rankings respectively, with titles on both tours to their names and plenty of buzz around both heading into 2020.
Gauff’s 2019 rise in particular has captured the imagination of sports fans the world over. It’s not hard to understand why: of all the current players with a WTA singles ranking, the 15-year-old is the eighth-youngest – at No. 68 in the world.
Gauff told friends in January that a top-100 ranking was her aim for the season, a lofty goal for the then-world No.686. In 2018 she was the Roland Garros girls’ singles champion, winner of the Junior Fed Cup title with USA and the 2018 Orange Bowl, while her ITF World Tennis Tour Juniors ranking had peaked at No.1 and had ended at No.2 at the end of the season. But the Delray Beach native was still to make an impression on the professional circuit, with just three ITF World Tennis Tour wins to her name.
Things began to change in February, sparked by a run to the final of W25 Surprise, AZ. Gauff claimed a place in the draw as a Junior Exempt entrant – the ITF initiative launched in 1997 to help talented players make the transition between the ITF World Tennis Tour Juniors and the professional circuits. As the year-end world No.2, she could claim direct entry into the main draw at two ITF W80 tournaments and one ITF W60.
Gauff took full advantage, surging to both the singles and doubles finals. She was halted by Sesil Karatantcheva for the singles title, but she and fellow American Usue Maitane Arconada won the doubles crown. Then came a wild card for the Miami Open, where she won her first WTA match against Caty McNally, her 2018 title-winning US Open girls’ doubles partner.
JE entries at W80 Charlottesville and W60 Saint-Gaudens followed before Gauff garnered international attention when she became the youngest qualifier at Wimbledon in the Open era, beating five-time former champion Venus Williams in the first round and surging to the Round of 16, where she lost in three sets to eventual champion Simona Halep.
And she wasn’t done there. Her first WTA doubles title soon followed, partnering McNally to victory in Washington ahead of the US Open, where the wold card surged to third round before being stopped by defending champion Naomi Osaka on an emotional night on Arthur Ashe Stadium. In Linz she lost in the last round of qualifying, only to receive a Lucky Loser spot and win the title, the WTA’s youngest title winner since 2014, before she and McNally clinched a second WTA doubles title in Luxembourg.
Restrictions on the number of professional events junior players can play mean Gauff will only play three tournaments before her 16th birthday in March, but the Australian Open will be on the American’s list, as it will for Italy’s Jannik Sinner, whose own 2019 season ended in style.
The former national champion skier, who only decided to focus on tennis at around the time Gauff was closing in on junior Grand Slam glory, shot up from No.551 to No. 78 on the ATP rankings over the course of a 2019 season which began at an M15 event in Monastir, Tunisia.
Like Gauff, Sinner played his last ITF World Tour Juniors event in 2018, reaching the quarter-finals at the Grade A Trofeo Bonfiglio in Milan. A couple of weeks earlier, the 18-year-old had won back-to-back main-draw matches on the ITF World Tennis Tour for the first time. By August, he had reached his first ITF Futures final, but it was in 2019 that his game suddenly took off in dramatic fashion.
After reaching the semis at M25 Aktobe in Kazakhstan in February, Sinner returned to Italy to start a 16-match unbeaten streak, winning the first, second and third singles titles of his career on home soil – the Bergamo Challenger 80, M25 Trento and M25 Santa Margherita Di Pula. The run saw his ranking rise from No. 546 to No. 319 in three weeks, and with that Sinner was free to focus on the ATP Challenger Tour.
Further Challenger titles have followed in Lexington and Ortisei, as well as a qualifying run to the first round of the US Open, where he took a set off former champion Stan Wawrinka, and a quarter-final surge at the ATP European Open in Antwerp, beating world No. 13 Gael Monfils on the way. But it was his victory at the ATP NextGen Finals that propelled Sinner into the spotlight – the third reserve and youngest entrant in the eight-player under-21 field, Sinner downed world No.18 Alex De Minaur to claim the title in Milan in November.
Both Gauff and Sinner are prime examples of junior players using the ITF World Tennis Tour as a stepping stone to achieve bigger things on the WTA and ATP Tours, whether to hone their technique, pick up crucial points, or adjust to the rigours of the professional game. All eyes will be on the duo in 2020, with many top juniors looking to follow their lead, hoping they are also ready to rise at such a rapid rate.