Preview: 2025 Australian Open Junior Championships
The 2025 Australian Open Junior Championships – the first Junior Grand Slam of the season – gets underway on Saturday and offers the chance for players to assert themselves on the global stage and make a powerful statement of intent.
The new season is already well underway with a host of ITF World Tennis Tour Juniors events already contested in 2025 including J300 Traralgon, which is the traditional warm-up event for the Australian Open Junior Championships.
However, the Australian Open will be the biggest test so far of form, fitness and the work done during the off-season for the cream of the junior crop – the stars of tomorrow.
The Australian Open Junior Championships also present a significant opportunity for players to showcase some enterprising tennis, lay down a marker and set the tone for the year ahead, not to mention lift Junior Grand Slam silverware.
In junior tennis, this period tends to be dominated by a new band of would-be contenders, with a number of last year's competitors having progressed along the ITF player pathway to the professional arena.
That said, one player who has already made her mark on the professional ranks but is still eligible for junior events is Australia’s Emerson Jones, who has enjoyed an impressive start to the 2025 campaign.
Queenslander Jones hit the headlines earlier this month after recording her maiden victory against a Top 50 opponent – Wang Xinyu of China, P.R. – at the Adelaide International on her WTA draw debut.
Jones, who will be named an ITF World Champion after finishing 2024 as the top-ranked girl on the planet, has since made her Grand Slam main draw debut, as a wild card at the Australian Open, against world No. 7 Elena Rybakina.
All eyes will therefore be on Jones as she bids to become the first Australian girl to win a Junior Grand Slam since Ashleigh Barty conquered all before her at the Junior Championships, Wimbledon in 2011.
Jones will also be bidding to become the first Australian girl to triumph at the Australian Open Junior Championships this century. The last to do so was Siobhan Drake-Brockman in 1995.
Success at a Junior Grand Slam would also exact a modicum of revenge for Jones, who was defeated in the final of the 2024 Australian Open Junior Championships and the 2024 Junior Championships, Wimbledon.
Similar applies to Czechia’s Jan Kumstat, who is the top-ranked player in the boys’ draw. The 18-year-old made it all the way to the boys’ final in Melbourne 12 months aho only succumb to Japan’s Rei Sakamoto.
Elsewhere in the 2025 boys’ draw, the likes of Kazakhstan’s Amir Omarkhanov, Jagger Leach of the United States and Great Britain’s Oliver Bonding will also have designs on lifting the trophy.
The boys’ draw also contains players, the likes of Spain’s Andres Santamarta Roig and Henry Bernet of Switzerland, who featured in a subjective ITF-produced list of junior players to watch in 2025. Bernet was this week crowned boys' champion at J300 Traralgon to signal his intentions for the season.
Also in the girls’ draw is Great Britain’s Mika Stojsavljevic, who already has a Junior Grand Slam title to her name having triumphed at the US Open Junior Championships in September. She became the first British girl to win a Slam since Heather Watson in 2009.
The likes of Belgium’s Jeline Vandromme, Wakana Sonobe of Japan, Serbia’s Teodora Kostovic and Kristina Penickova of the United States are other high-ranked players with visions, no doubt, of success in Melbourne. Vandromme conquered all before her in the girls' draw at J300 Traralgon this week.
As with the boys’ draw, there will be players competing who have been identified as players to watch in 2025, while others travel to Australia as members of the Grand Slam Player Development Programme/ITF Touring Team.
Perhaps someone to keep close tabs on is France’s Ksenia Efremova, who is only 15 years old but has already claimed three professional titles on the ITF World Tennis Tour Women’s. Big things are expected of her in 2025.
For those competing in Melbourne, it is worth noting that the likes of Iga Swiatek, Sebastian Korda, Coco Gauff, Holger Rune, Lorenzo Musetti and Leylah Fernandez have all won Junior Grand Slams in the last seven years.
While such a triumph is no guarantee of future success, it can certainly be an important step on a player’s pathway to the higher echelons of the game.