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Ros Satar
Mini Xu in the first round of the Girls' Singles at Wimbledon 2025, London, UK
Mini Xu in the first round of the Girls' Singles at Wimbledon 2025, London, UK | (Photo by Daniel Kopatsch/Getty Images)

Tennis | Wimbledon 2025 | Five things to know about the Junior Wimbledon

Britwatch Team
Tennis

By Ros Satar, Britwatch Sports at Wimbledon

  • As British interest in the Juniors ends with Mimi Xu we take a quick look at the junior tours and its history at Wimbledon
  • There are some very famous names that did the very difficult junior and main double
LONDON, ENGLAND – Britain’s Mimi Xu enjoyed a run to the semi-finals of the Girls’ Singles at Wimbledon, as we pick five things to know about the Junior Tennis tour.

 

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What is the junior tour?

In general, the junior tennis refers to matches where the players are aged 18 or under. Eligibility for the International Tennis Federation (ITF) tournaments is based on the year of birth, so players must move on to the main adult tours after their 18th birthday.

Playing on the junior circuit gives players a world junior ranking, which in turn helps players gain an ATP or WTA ranking, progressing through the ITF tournaments before potentially moving on to the lower tier professional tournaments (ATP Challenger, WTA 125K).

 

How does the junior tour work?

  • Juniors can compete in the four Junior Grand Slam events (1000 ranking points to the winner)
  • Seven J500 events are the next most prestigious, and are run all over the world: Cairo, Brazil, Germany, Italy, Osaka, Mexico and the USA (Orange Bowl)
  • J300, J200, J100, J60 and J30
  • The ITF World Tennis Tour Junior Finals also offer 1000 ranking points to match the Grand Slams and the tournament is only available to the top eight players following the conclusion of the US Open Juniors.

 

What is the next step?

Playing on the junior circuit gives players a world junior ranking. These rankings are used to determine the players then able to benefit from the Feed-up systems into the Professional game – the Junior Accelerator Program into the ATP/WTA lower tier events (Challengers, WTA 125K) and the Junior Reserved into the ITF World Tennis Tour (ITF) tournaments.

 

 

Upcoming names to look out for?

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Back in 2018, a young Jack Draper was taken the distance and lost to Tseng Chun-Hsin in the final, and in 2023 Henry Searle lifted the title but at 19, he can no longer compete on the junior circuit and has largely been playing in Futures and challengers.

Britain’s Mimi Xu lost in the Girls’ Singles semi-final to the No. 6 seed Julieta Pareja from the USA, who has also been competing on the WTA tour, reaching the semi-final of Bogota earlier this year. She will face Slovakia’s Mia Pohankova in the final.

This year the Boys singles will be between Bulgaria’s Ivan Ivanov and Ronit Karki.

 

Juniors at Wimbledon

In 2025 there are six Junior events:

  • Boys Singles
  • Girls’ Singles
  • Boys’ Doubles
  • Girls’ Doubles
  • Invitational 14 and Under Singles draw for both Boys and Girls

At Wimbledon Junior Boys and Girls are aged between 14 and 18 and they do not receive prize money but instead up to 1000 ranking points that count towards their ranking.

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There are many players in the draw that have competed at Junior Wimbledon – but few have done the double and win the Junior and the main singles titles.

  • Ann Jones (1956)
  • Karen Hantze (1960)
  • Bjorn Borg (1972)
  • Pat Cash (1982)
  • Stefan Edberg (1983)
  • Martina Hingis (1994)
  • Amelie Mauresmo (1996)
  • Roger Federer (1998)
  • Ash Barty (2011)
  • Iga Swiatek (2018)

 

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