Top juniors head to USTA National Campus for team event qualifying

The world's top juniors will gather at the USTA National Campus in Orlando, Fla. this week with the hopes of giving their countries the opportunity to be crowned world champions. From April 20-22, the Campus will host the qualifying events for the North/Central American and Caribbean region in the most prestigious 16-and-under and 14-and-under team events in world tennis: the junior Billie Jean King Cup by Gainbridge, Davis Cup, and ITF World Junior Tennis. 

Three days of round-robin play will determine which nations advance to the finals, which we be held laster this year. Teams will go head-to-head in ties that consist of two singles matches and a doubles match, with the top two countries from each four-country pool moving on.

The U.S. hopes to not only qualify in all four events, but build on the success it had a year ago. The U.S. junior Billie Jean King Cup team is the defending champions, the junior Davis Cup team is defending a runner-up finish, while both World Junior Tennis teams finished third.

In Orlando, a trio of 15-year-olds look to lead the U.S. Junior Billie Jean King Cup team back to the Finals. Iva Jovic, a member of the team that won it all last year, will be joined on captain Tom Gutteridge's team by Tyra Grant and Bentonville, Ark. native Alanis Hamilton. In December, Grant, born in Bordighera, Italy, and Torrance, Calif. native Jovic partnered to win the doubles title at the prestigious Orange Bowl. On the boys' side, Sylvain Guichard's junior Davis Cup team is made up of two 16-year-olds, Max Exsted and Matisse Farzam, and 15-year-old Jagger Leach of Laguna Beach, Calif. Leach, recently a doubles champion at the inaugural junior event at Indian Wells, is the oldest child of three-time major champion Lindsay Davenport and her husband Jon Leach.