June always produces a surplus of top performances, with the French Open Championships providing the big stage for juniors, while college players flood the ITF World Tennis Tour with school out for the summer. This month, with five weekends to track, I could have included a dozen more juniors and former collegiate players, so apologies to those champions. But here are a whopping 19 highlights as the summer tennis season gets underway.
The longtime doubles partners started their junior slam careers with a semifinal appearance at the U.S. Open last fall, then reached the doubles final of this year’s first junior major in Australia. At last month’s French Open Junior Championships, the Duke recruits capped that progression with the title, just the second French Open girls doubles championship for an American pair and the first since 1982. Navarro, who came back after her loss in the singles final earlier in the day, joined with Beck to defeat No. 4 seeds Alina Charaeva and Anastasia Tikhonova, with the unseeded pair beating the Russians 6-1, 6-2 in the final.
Leylah Fernandez
The 16-year old Canadian warmed up for the French Open with a title at the Grade 1 in Belgium the week prior and she kept right on winning in Paris, with the top seed claiming all six of her victories in straight sets, including the final, a 6-3, 6-2 win over No. 8 seed Emma Navarro. Since her appearance in the Australian Open girls final in January, Fernandez has been concentrating on her WTA ranking, now at 371, but she has not ruled out playing the U.S. Open juniors. Currently No. 3 in the ITF Junior rankings, Fernandez is 21-2 on the ITF Junior Circuit this year.
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