More than a hundred aspiring players, all with designs on becoming the next Iga Swiatek, Carlos Alcaraz or Holger Rune and making a somewhat seamless transition to the professional game in the years ahead, are converging on Wimbledon. 

Saturday marks the start of the Junior Championships when the stars of tomorrow bid for silverware on one of the biggest stages in sport, and indeed tackle a significant conundrum for most junior players – grass.

It is perhaps worth noting that six out of the last nine girls to win J1 Roehampton, the traditional grass-court warm-up event for Wimbledon, have proceeded to top the podium at the Junior Championships.

This year, that privilege falls to Liv Hovde of the United States after she conquered all before at Roehampton. She is the top seed in the Wimbledon girls’ draw and begins her quest for SW19 glory against Great Britain’s Ranah Akua Stoiber.

A similar trend does not exist on the boys’ side, with Canada’s Denis Shapovalov the last boy to triumph at Roehampton before going on the lift silverware at Wimbledon back in 2016. 

The top seed in the Wimbledon boys’ competition is France’s Gabriel Debru, who is the only previous Junior Grand Slam singles champion in either the boys’ or girls’ draw having triumphed at Roland Garros – his home Slam – last month.

Debru is bidding to become the first boy to claim back-to-back Junior Grand Slam titles, and indeed the Roland Garros-Wimbledon double, since Tseng Chun-Hsin of Chinese Taipei in 2018. The last girl to do likewise was Switzerland’s Belinda Bencic in 2013.

The French teenager is joined in the boys’ draw by the likes of Jakub Mensik, who reached the Australian Open boys’ final in January, Mili Poljicak of Croatia, Peru’s Gonzalo Bueno and American Nishesh Basavareddy.

Mensik opens his account against Henry Searle of Great Britain, while Poljicak faces a first-round showdown with Australian Jeremy Jin, with Bueno up against Argentina’s Juan Manuel La Serna and Basavareddy drawing swords with Dylan Dietrich of Switzerland.

There are also a number of Junior Grand Slam doubles winners in the singles draw, including two-time champions Edas Butvilas of Lithuania and Hong Kong’s Coleman Wong, who is to feature in a behind-the-scenes ITF video.

In the girls’ draw, Hovde finds herself alongside fellow top-10 players Celine Naef of Switzerland, who this year received a Grand Slam Player Grant through the Grand Slam Player Development Programme, and Czech Nikola Bartunkova.

Naef is another player to face a home favourite in the first round, with the 17-year-old going up against Sarah Tatu, while Bartunkova faces a tussle with Turkey’s Aysegul Mert – a member of the Grand Slam Player Development Programme/ITF Touring Team.

Further information about the Junior Championships, Wimbledon, including full draws and acceptance lists, can be found here.