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Title

THE ADVANTAGES OF PLAYING ON THE ITF BOYS JUNIOR CIRCUIT

Abstract

Most French tennis fans think French players are very successful among the juniors, but cannot make it to the top level in the ATP Tour, never winning a grand slam or being world n°1. This is a reason to mention the participation of our young players in the ITF junior circuit as a waste of time.

Keywords

ITF Junior Circuit, Junior Player Development

Summary

The existence of a grand slam tournament on clay in France often leads to a comparison with Spanish tennis, producing a big amount of French open winners and runner-ups. Now, we know that Spanish school mostly educates players away from the ITF junior tour at the benefit of an early coming on the pro circuit.

Are we right to persist in developing our players on the junior tour? Should we toughen our young boys on future tournaments, where it all starts?
We’ll try to give answers to a few questions:
- Keep on playing juniors?
- How optimize players education on junior circuit : win titles and prepare to professionnal life ?
Statistics about a few French players
Best ATP
ranking Best junior record

The reasons why junior should play on the ITF junior tour

• Organization is based on the ATP pro tour : tournaments every week, qualifying events, sign in, lucky losers, ranking every week (win points, defend points from previous year…
• Developing players through doubles : double points are part of singles ranking ; preparing team competitions, improving one’s game
• Improving thanks to matches accumulation (Gonzales : 158 singles & 128 doubles). Players at this ages are more likely to accept evolution in their game than through adult’s authority.
• Play the four grand slam tournaments : learn the specific pressure, learn to play on big courts…
• Learn to win tournaments: have the goal of winning the final when being top seeded…
• Playing ell the roles of a tennis player: the outsider, the n° 1 seed, the lucky loser, the qualifier,
• Competing with best players of the same age group: being the king in one’s country is not always very good for future.
• Learn to travel and live the life of a pro player: develop one’s resourcefulness, live in the airports, hotels, speak English, develop one’s resilience capacity (being able to practice after a bad loss, wait for next tournament…

Weaknesses of junior circuit
• Life conditions may be too much comfortable! No money to spend as almost everything is paid, either by tournaments or by federations. There will be a big change on futures.
• The junior champion may have the feeling that he will also be n°1 on the pro circuit.

CV

Name

Bernard

Surname

Peste

Curriculum vitae

- Club coach and regional coach 1975 – 1984, getting French diplomas BE1 and BE2.
- FFT National coach 1984 – 1996 for boys aged 18 to 21, coaching T. BENHABILES / T. CHAMPION / O. DELAITRE / G. GAOUX / A. BOETSCH
- Captain for BOROTRA, GALEA and European cups.
- Director of coach education at the FFT since 1996.
- Associate Technical Director for the FFT since 2002.
- Member of the ITF following task forces : coach commission, coach education, play and stay, under 10s.
- Author of several books and videos on coaching and young players’ psychology.

History

Member for

2 years 41 weeks