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 4 focuses on two players who have yet to make the transition but whose future could be very bright indeed if history tells us anything

Being crowned ITF Junior World Champion is no guarantee of success but it’s certainly a good indication.

The list of former Junior champions is littered with some great names of the past - Ivan Lendl, Pat Cash, Stefan Edberg and Roger Federer were all Boys’ World Champions in their time, while Gabriela Sabatini, Martina Hingis, Amelie Mauresmo and Victoria Azarenka are just some of the names to have been crowned Girls’ champions.

Those are quite some footsteps to follow in for 2019’s champions, Diane Parry and Thiago Agustin Tirante, but perhaps it would be more pertinent to look at those Juniors who have topped the year-end rankings more recently to see how they have made the subsequent transition into the professional game.

One need only look as recently as 2013 to find two players who didn’t take long to find their feet on their respective tours.

Belinda Bencic first reached her career-high ranking of No. 7 in 2016 and has finished in the year-end Top 10 for the first time this year. Alexander Zverev was the boys’ champion the same year as Bencic and his career has taken a similar route as the Swiss.

The German attained his career-high ranking of No. 3 in 2017 and has been a regular in the world’s Top 10 for the last three seasons.

If recent history is anything to go by the transition has been quicker on the men’s side of the game.

Andrey Rublev was crowned Junior World Champion in 2014 and the Russian has started to make a name for himself, reaching his career-high ranking of No. 22 in October this year. He also demonstrated why he is such a dangerous player with an impeccable record at the 2019 Davis Cup by Rakuten Madrid Finals.

In 2015 it was Taylor Fritz who finished year-end No. 1 in Juniors and the American didn’t take long to start getting noticed – not least for that huge serve of his.

Fritz reached a career-high ranking of No. 25 in August 2019 and was another player to feature prominently for his country at this year’s Davis Cup Finals in Madrid.

Serbia’s Miomir Kecmanovic took the World Champion gong in 2016 and he has already broken into the Top 50, peaking at No. 47 earlier this year.

On the women’s side, the best performing of the recent champions is Anastasia Potapova, who was crowned World Champion in 2016. The Russian 18-year-old ended this year in the Top 100 and reached a career-high of No. 64 in July.

The science might not be exact and of course there are exceptions (some of which we have spoken about earlier in this series of articles) but in all likelihood it will take two or three years for this year's Junior World Champions to start making a name for themselves.

Watch this space in 2022...