Junior Circuits Abroad for Indian Kids...

[sameerph]

Aryan is in the SF at Asian juniors, beat 13th seed Taiwanese 62 63. Kriish lost 75 26 46 against the 14th seeded Singapore guy who had upset the Chinese 2nd seed earlier.

Aryan plays third seeed Kazak Amir Omarkhanov in the SF who won Asia Oceania juniors last month winning the final against Yuvan.

[jayakris]

Yeah, the Kazakhi must be really good. He beat Aryan 63 60 in the semi on Friday. Aryan and Tianhui Zhang (CHN) won the doubles title though. I guess this will be Aryan's final junior event.

[sameerph]

Yes, Aryan will enter top 70 with those singles and doubles points this week. With him not being entered for any remaining big events this and next month, he has no chance to finish the year in top 30 in year end ITF junior rankings which would have provided him 8 spots in next year in ITF futures main draws. So, he should not be playing juniors any more and enter some ITF futures for the rest of the year where he should get in based on his top 100 juniors rankings. That opportunity of junior exempt will be available for him only till end of the year or maybe start of next year until the entries for next year are based on rankings in 2024 when he will no longer be ranked in juniors.

[jayakris]

^^^ If I remember correctly, he played 2 or 3 junior exempt events earlier this year.

[sameerph]

Yes. But, it does seem like there is no limit on an individual player taking the junior reserved spot. This is in the ITF rules

Entered players with an approved ITF Combined Junior Ranking of 1-100 shall be selected for a maximum of three (3) Main Draw places at each ITF World Tennis Tour 15s tournament.

Earlier I thought that means a player can enter only 3 tournaments in a year with junior reserved spot, but now after checking some of the entry lists looks like that means one tournament can give maximum of 3 spots for junior top 100 players but there is no limit on how many tournaments a player can enter using that junior ranking.

Additionally, it is mentioned in rules

“Carry-over” ITF Junior ranking
In addition, players born in 2004 may carry over their 12 December 2022 ITF Combined Junior ranking for the purposes of entering $15,000 Tournaments
until they turn 19 years of age. The Monday of each week determines the player’s age for that week. Thus, a player who is 18 on Monday but turns 19
on Tuesday would be eligible to use their ITF Combined Junior Ranking for that week but would no longer be able to use their ITF Combined Junior
Ranking the following week. If two players share the same ranking (one witha current ranking, the other with a carry-over ranking), then the player withthe current ITF Ranking will be ordered before the player holding the carryover ranking on the System of Merit.

That means Aryan will be able to use his junior rankings to enter ITF M15 tournaments till he turns 19 which will be in November 2024. That would be a very good opportunity for Aryan to play ITF M15 tournaments next year too and perhaps that is the reason why Aryan played junior events now to end the year in top 100.

[jayakris]

^^^ Thanks for checking up on the rules. So the mystery is solved, on why Aryan and Yuvan continued with the junior events till late in the year. It is to preserve their rankings for pro entries next year! Good rule, from ITF. I think this is new.

[sameerph]

16 year old Aarjun Pandit won the J60 singles title in Nairobi,Kenya. Aarjun has been playing there for last 3 weeks, made the SF in first week, final last week and title this week. In the first 2 weeks, he lost to Serbian top seed Nikola Jovic with an ITF junior ranking of 174 ( Aarjun had a ranking of 541 before this week). But, this week Aarjun finally won against the Serbian 76(6) 64 in the final. Aarjun will now move close to top 400 and in India top 10.

There are 5 2007 born players in India top 10- Manas, Kriish Tyagi, Hitesh Chauhan, Rethin Pranav and Aarjun. Hope they take a bigger strides and play some junior slams in next 2 years when they have their junior eligibility.

[jayakris]

Looks like these two were the best two players there that nobody else could beat in 3 weeks. Getting past that one dude who had taken him out twice in a third attempt shows some good spunk in Aarjun.

[prasen9]

You know these days that there is inflation when you have people naming their kids Aarjun. Seems like the value of "a"s have gone down. And, one a is meaningless, so one must use a few to get value. Arjun himself would be apalled. Ghor Kalijug!

[jayakris]

^^ Haha. I was also wondering why he has a double "a" in his name. I see no reason why the Mahabharata character name needs a double "a", and can't think of a derived word from "arjun" as "aarjun" in Sanskrit either (nor from the possible root "Rju" referring to rectitiude)

Aarjun is currently #1 in the AITA u16 singles ranking, ahead of Manas, Kriish and Rethin etc. But he is #5 among u16 Indians in the ITF rankings, behind Kriish, Manas, HItesh and Rethin.

[jayakris]

#159 Aditya Govila is at the big J500 (old grade A) in Merida, Mexico, and won the first round against a low-ranked Mexican wildcard. #154 Krisha Mahendran lost 57 67(5) to #209 Capucine Jauffret of USA.