Preview: 2025 Junior Championships, Wimbledon
The Championships at Wimbledon are well underway, and the world’s finest junior players will have their moment under the SW19 spotlight when the Junior Championships begin on Saturday 5 July.
As it is for their professional equivalents, Wimbledon is the third Grand Slam of the season and offers the opportunity for aspiring junior players to enhance their reputations, lift silverware and scoop a sizeable haul of ranking points.
There is still plenty of mileage in the races to finish 2025 as the planet’s year-end No. 1 juniors, but safe to say the ITF World Tennis Tour junior rankings will firmly take shape after Wimbledon.
J300 Roehampton – the traditional warm-up event to the Junior Championships – has concluded today with Great Britain’s Oliver Bonding crowned boys’ singles champion and Julieta Pareja of the United States triumphing in the girl’s singles.
J300 Roehampton is a tournament that offers valuable ranking points but also exposure to grass, with some junior players unlikely to have played a competitive match or had much experience of the surface previously.
View this post on Instagram
It is also worth noting that seven of the last 12 girls to triumph at J300 Roehampton have proceeded to conquer all before them at Wimbledon, although Liv Hovde of the United States was the last to do so in 2022.
Once play gets underway, junior world No. 1 Emerson Jones of Australia will continue her quest to win a Junior Grand Slam title having reached two finals in 2024 and two semi-finals this season.
The 16-year-old’s junior career has already been a huge success having won the ITF World Tennis Tour Junior Finals in Chengdu last season to help finish the campaign as the year-end junior world No. 1, which sealed ITF World Champion status.
But even for someone with a Top 50 scalp to her name – Queenslander Jones defeated Wang Xiyu at the Adelaide International in January – and has won pro titles, a Junior Grand Slam is a coveted prize.
Not to the same extent but similarly to Jones, Great Britian’s Hannah Klugman has increasingly been focusing upon professional events this season but will also bid for her maiden Junior Grand Slam title.
View this post on Instagram
Should she prevail at her home Slam – very much her home Slam given she lives 10 minutes from the gates of Wimbledon – Klugman would be the first British girl to do so in singles since Laura Robson in 2008.
Klugman came agonisingly close to sealing Junior Grand Slam glory at Roland Garros when she made it all the way to the girls' final before succumbing to Austria’s Lilli Tagger with silverware tantalisingly within reach.
Tagger became the first Austrian player – boy or girl – to win a Junior Grand Slam singles title on the clay of Paris and the 17-year-old will be aiming to make it back-to-back Junior Grand Slam titles at Wimbledon.
The last girl to win successive Junior Grand Slam titles was Alina Korneeva, who triumphed at the Australian Open and Roland Garros in 2023. The last girl to win Roland Garros and Wimbledon in the same year was Belinda Bencic in 2013.
With this being a Junior Grand Slam, the field is strong so these are just a few names with which to conjure. In reality, the winner could come from anywhere within the draw.
View this post on Instagram
The likes of Kristina Penickova of the United States, Serbia’s Teodora Kostovic and Pareja will also be eyeing silverware. Great Britain’s Mika Stojsavljevic, meanwhile, has experience of the winning a Junior Grand Slam having won the girls’ title at the 2024 US Open.
The boys’ draw is also jam-packed with potential champions. Spain’s Andres Santamarta Roig is the highest-ranked player in draw having won two J500 titles – the rung below Junior Grand Slams – at Gaspar and Offenbach this season.
The 18-year-old has not replicated this form at the Junior Grand Slams so far, with his best performance coming at this year's Roland Garros Junior Championships when he reached the third round.
Italy’s Jacopo Vasami is another player who has enjoyed a productive campaign on the ITF World Tennis Tour Juniors, winning J500 titles at Cairo and Milan, while also reached the last eight at the Roland Garros Junior Championships.
Niels McDonald of Germany was the man to go the distance on the clay of Paris as he became the first German boy this century to win a junior singles title at Roland Garros.
Not since 2018 when Tseng Chun-Hsin of Chinese Taipei achieved the feat has a boy won successive Junior Grand Slam singles titles at Roland Garros and Wimbledon. The gauntlet has been thrown down to McDonald.
Also back at a junior event is Mees Rottgering of the Netherlands who triumphed at the 2024 ITF Junior Finals in Chengdu. The 17-year-old has focused on professional events this season but will compete at SW19 in a bid to win a Junior Grand Slam title. He finished runner-up in the boys' event in 2024.
The likes of American trio Jagger Leach, Benjamin Willwerth – the 18-year-old reached the boys’ final at the Australian Open Junior Championships in January – and Jack Kennedy will also fancy their chances as will Bulgaria’s Ivan Ivanov.
As always, the ITF-operated Grand Slam Player Development Programme Touring Team will be represented at SW19, with Bulgaria’s Rositsa Dencheva reaching the semi-finals of the girls’ draw at J300 Roehampton.
It is worth noting also that all ranking points won at Wimbledon will count towards qualification for the 2025 ITF World Tennis Tour Junior Finals, which will be held in Chengdu from 22-26 October.
The Finals will consist of the top eight boys and girls in the ITF World Tennis Tour Junior Finals Qualification Rankings. The Qualification Rankings can be viewed here.