Since May 24, tennis lovers have had the opportunity to see some of the best junior players in the Southern African region, as well as some players from other parts of the world in action in Pretoria.

The Tuks Tennis Club on the sports campus of the University of Pretoria is used as a base for a series of three consecutive tournaments in the International Tennis Federation’s ITF World Tennis Tour for Juniors. Two of the tournaments have already been completed, while the third in this series takes place this week at the same venue.

The third tournament in this ITF J60 series kicked off on Monday 10 June and will last until Friday 14 June, when the respective finals will take place.

Since the restructuring of junior ITF tournaments last year, the former grade 4 (J4) junior tournaments are now known as J60 tournaments. This simply means that winners in these tournaments can collect a maximum of 60 ranking points to improve their position in the ITF junior rankings.

Juniors between the ages of 13 and 18 participate equally in these tournaments, which means that all age groups compete in one division against each other.

After a qualifying round, the initial 64 players who enter these tournaments are whittled down to 32, who then advance over two rounds on their way to a quarter-final, semi-final and final.

Apart from the South African participants, who entered from all over the country for the first two tournaments in the series of three since May 27, the Tuks Tennis Club has also played host to juniors from countries such as Ireland, Great Britain, Brazil, Japan, Kyrgyzstan, India, Mozambique, Botswana and Zimbabwe. Players from Australia and Lesotho will join other international participants for this final leg of the three-tournament series.

The advantage that South African juniors, as well as players from the Southern African region, get in series like this is that they do not have to travel at great expense to other parts of the world to collect ITF ranking points. This series offers singles players the opportunity to chase a possible 180 ranking points within the span of three weeks.

In the first tournament, 16-year-old Siyabonga Jaca from Cape Town won the boys’ singles title, while another 16-year-old, Rishitha Basireddy from India, beat 18-year-old Kaitlyn-Leigh Ramduth from Durban to win the girls’ title.

Ramduth and her 16-year-old partner, Abigayel Vosloo from the Eastern Cape, won the girls’ doubles, while Pretoria’s Tiaan Nelson and Rynard van der Laan took the boys’ doubles title.

The final results of the second tournament were not yet available by Monday.

Those interested who would like to follow the action in the third tournament of the series this week, but cannot travel to the Tuks Tennis Club, can watch the action on the SuperSport Schools streaming channel. Users can register for free via the channel’s website to watch the action or they can also access it via the SuperSport Schools channel’s app.

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