Juniors

Junior tennis on Wikipedia
Grand Slam boys’ champions
ITF Juniors Website

I’ve prepared all singles results of Grand Slam tournaments from quarter-finals and onwards of the years 1981-2012. You can check this out in the drop-down menu. I guess it’s interesting to look at some surnames of players, who won boys’ biggest tournaments but never appeared as successful professionals. There’s nothing unusual that dreams of promising juniors are often dashed. In those events participate players mainly born only in two different years – at the professional tour it’s a span of 15 years more or less, thus competitiveness is incomparable. Moreover juniors don’t play “the best of five” matches so the physical preparation isn’t as important as at the main level. Another substantial issue it’s a fact that amazingly gifted youngsters don’t play on regular basis in juniors tournaments because at the age of 16/17 they begin to compete seriously with pro-players (for instance Becker, Agassi, Sampras, Hewitt, Nadal etc.)  What’s the point for Lleyton Hewitt to enter junior Grand Slams as he had won an ATP title before turned 17? He could have played eight junior majors in years 1998-99, having won his first ATP title…
Stefan Edberg is the most successful junior in the Open era, he’s the only guy to win the Grand Slam (1983), in my opinion this achievement plus a couple doubles major titles places him above his biggest rival Boris Becker considering the entire history of this sport. The Swede is a phenomenon, he transformed his outstanding junior career onto professional tour, where reached all major finals! Gael Monfils was close to equal Edberg’s stellar junior feat 21 years later, but didn’t manage to get the title at the US Open 2004. Below some stats considering boys’ Grand Slams in the Open era:

# At least two Grand Slam titles:

4 – Billy Martin (1973-74), Stefan Edberg (1983), Mark Kratzmann (1982 & 84)
3 – Nicolas Pereira (1988), Daniel Elsner (1996-97), Gael Monfils (2004)
2 – John Alexander (1968 & 70), Byron Bertram (1969-70), Brad Drewett (1975 & 77), Heintz Gunthardt (1976), Van Winitsky (1977), Ivan Lendl (1978), Ramesh Krishnan (1979), Pat Cash (1982), Guillermo Perez Roldan (1986-87), Nicklas Kulti (1989), Andrea Gaudenzi (1990), Thomas Enqvist (1991), Leander Paes (1990-91), Nicolas Kiefer (1995), Andy Roddick (2000), Richard Gasquet (2002), Donald Young (2005 & 07), Grigor Dimitrov (2008), Bernard Tomic (2008-09)

# Longest winning streaks:

23 – Daniel Elsner (1996-97)
21 – Stefan Edberg (1983)
20 – Gael Monfils (2004)
18 – Nicolas Pereira (1988)
17 – Mark Kratzmann (1984)

# Longest match (time and number of games):

Wimbledon 2002, 2R:
Ryan Henry d. Clement Morel 7-5, 6-7(3), 26-24… 4 hours, 14 minutes