2024 ITF World Junior Tennis Finals Preview

Photo : Peter Figura

The 2024 ITF World Junior Tennis Finals are set to get underway in Prostejov, Czechia.

Canada’s boys team is one of the 16 squads that qualified for the under-14 event, beating out Mexico and Guatemala to secure a spot in the finals.

All three players that helped Canada qualify for the finals will return in Prostejov.

Captain Phillippe Courteau will lead Callum MacKinnon, Julian Mahdavi, and Luca Vicol into the clay court event.

MacKinnon is enjoying a banner 2024 thus far, having claimed the 2024 Under 14 Fischer Indoor National Championship in April, beating Team Canada teammate Mahdavi in the final. The Toronto, Ont. native has also won the Yonex U14 Indoor Provincial Doubles Championship alongside partner Timofey Dobrovolsky.

Mahdavi, a fellow Ontario native, has claimed plenty of hardware himself this season, winning the Provincial Championship in both the singles and doubles competitions.

Vicol, a native of British Columbia, won the 2024 Indoor Provincial Championships in February and finished as the runner-up in the doubles competition at the 2024 Indoor National Championships

All three players are members of the U15 Canadian Prospect Team.

Canada will be in a group with Great Britain (3), Japan (5), and the Netherlands. The team’s first match will be on Monday against the fifth-seeded Japanese team.

Canada finished second at this event in 2023, losing to this year’s host Czechia in the final. Canada has never been crowned world champions despite 18 World Junior Tennis Finals appearances.

Japan finished 1-2 in the round robin in 2023 and did not reach the knockout rounds. Great Britain finished atop their group in 2023 at 2-1 but were eliminated by France in the quarter-finals. The Netherlands will be making its first appearance in the boys’ draw at the World Junior Tennis Finals.

Of the 16 teams that qualified for the event, the United States holds the most titles with six, followed by Spain and France with three apiece.

The tournament takes place from Aug. 5-10. The tournament consists of 16 teams divided into four groups. Each nation will play three group stage matches with the top two teams in each group advancing to the knockout stage.

Many of the world’s top professionals participated in the ITF World Junior Tennis Finals in their careers, including Canadians Félix Auger-Aliassime and Bianca Andreescu, as well as Carlos Alcaraz, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, and Iga Swiatek.

This will be the 25th time the Tenisovy Klub Prostejov has hosted the World Junior Tennis Finals. The club first staged the tournament in 1999.

Written By

Jonathan Chan