Transitioning from Junior level to Professional level (Statistics!)

I had a few hours to kill this evening, so I thought I'd take a look at the entire history of boys grand slam champions in the Open Era, and see how many of them have made successful transitions to the adult level.

Since the Open Era began, there have been 138 different boy's champions, across 180 grand slam events!

I've painstakingly pulled together a table of data for every single junior slam winner, and if you read on, I'll have some analysis of the data below:

Name	First Junior Slam	Junior Slams	Highest Rank	Highest Rank Yr	Tour Titles	Slam Titles	Best Slam Result	Best Slam Result Yr
Phil Dent	1968	1	17	1977	3	0	F	1974
John Alexander	1968	2	8	1975	7	0	SF	1973
Allan McDonald	1969	1	217	1973	0	0	R64	1972
Antonio Muñoz	1969	1	74	1973	0	0	R32	1974
Byron Bertram	1969	2	51	1976	0	0	QF	1977
Juan Herrera	1970	1	180	1974	0	0	-	-
Cliff Letcher	1971	1	63	1978	0	0	R16	1975
Corrado Barazzutti	1971	1	7	1978	5	0	SF	1977
Robert Kreiss	1971	1	84	1974	0	0	R64	1974
Paul Kronk	1972	1	78	1976	0	0	QF	1978
Buster Mottram	1972	1	15	1983	2	0	R16	1977
Björn Borg	1972	1	1	1977	64	11	W	1974
Paul McNamee	1973	1	24	1986	2	0	SF	1982
Víctor Pecci	1973	1	9	1980	10	0	F	1979
Billy Martin	1973	4	32	1975	1	0	QF	1977
Harry Britain	1974	1	330	1975	0	0	-	-
Christophe Casa	1974	1	146	1980	0	0	R64	1977
Brad Drewett	1975	2	34	1984	2	0	QF	1976
Christophe Roger-Vasselin	1975	1	29	1983	0	0	SF	1983
Chris Lewis	1975	1	19	1984	3	0	F	1983
Howard Schoenfield	1975	1	108	1980	1	0	R128	1975
Ray Kelly	1976	2	288	1976	0	0	-	-
Heinz Günthardt	1976	2	22	1986	5	0	QF	1985
Ricardo Yzaga	1976	1	71	1982	0	0	R16	1981
John McEnroe	1977	1	1	1980	77	7	W	1979
Van Winitsky	1977	2	35	1982	3	0	R32	1980
Pat Serret	1978	1	327	1987	0	0	-	-
Ivan Lendl	1978	2	1	1983	94	8	W	1984
Per Hjertquist	1978	1	68	1980	1	0	R32	1981
Greg Whitecross	1979	1	161	1982	0	0	R128	1979
Ramesh Krishnan	1979	2	23	1985	8	0	QF	1981
Scott Davis	1979	1	11	1985	3	0	QF	1984
Craig Miller	1980	1	102	1983	0	0	R64	1979
Henri Leconte	1980	1	5	1986	9	0	SF	1986
Thierry Tulasne	1980	1	10	1986	5	0	R16	1981
Mike Falberg	1980	1	-	-	-	-	-	-
Jörgen Windahl	1981	1	108	1987	0	0	R128	1981
Mats Wilander	1981	1	1	1988	33	7	W	1982
Matt Anger	1981	1	23	1986	1	0	R16	1986
Thomas Hogstedt	1981	1	38	1983	1	0	R64	1981
Mark Kratzmann	1982	4	50	1990	0	0	R16	1987
Tarik Benhabiles	1982	1	22	1987	0	0	R16	1987
Pat Cash	1982	2	4	1988	6	1	W	1987
Stefan Edberg	1983	4	1	1990	42	3	W	1985
Kent Carlsson	1984	1	6	1988	9	0	R16	1987
Shane Barr	1985	1	160	1988	0	0	R64	1987
Jaime Yzaga	1985	1	18	1989	8	0	QF	1991
Leonardo Lavalle	1985	1	51	1986	1	0	R16	1989
Tim Trigueiro	1985	1	364	1990	0	0	-	-
Guillermo Pérez Roldán	1986	2	13	1988	9	0	QF	1988
Eduardo Vélez	1986	1	215	1987	0	0	-	-
Javier Sánchez	1986	1	23	1994	4	0	QF	1991
Jason Stoltenberg	1987	1	19	1994	4	0	SF	1996
Diego Nargiso	1987	1	67	1988	0	0	R32	1988
David Wheaton	1987	1	12	1991	3	0	SF	1991
Johan Anderson	1988	1	90	1989	0	0	R32	1990
Nicolás Pereira	1988	3	74	1996	2	0	R32	1995
Nicklas Kulti	1989	2	32	1993	3	0	QF	1992
Fabrice Santoro	1989	1	17	2001	6	0	QF	2006
Jonathan Stark	1989	1	36	1994	2	0	R32	1996
Dirk Dier	1990	1	118	1996	0	0	R64	1996
Andrea Gaudenzi	1990	2	18	1995	3	0	R16	1994
Leander Paes	1990	2	73	1998	1	0	R32	1997
Thomas Enqvist	1991	2	4	1999	19	0	F	1999
Andrei Medvedev	1991	1	4	1994	11	0	F	1999
Grant Doyle	1992	1	173	1997	0	0	R128	1992
Andrei Pavel	1992	1	13	2004	3	0	QF	2002
David Škoch	1992	1	133	1997	0	0	R128	1996
Brian Dunn	1992	1	153	1995	0	0	R64	1992
James Baily	1993	1	865	1993	0	0	-	-
Roberto Carretero	1993	1	58	1996	1	0	R64	1996
Razvan Sabau	1993	1	74	2005	0	0	R128	1999
Marcelo Ríos	1993	1	1	1998	18	0	F	1998
Ben Ellwood	1994	1	140	1996	0	0	R64	1996
Jacobo Díaz	1994	1	68	2001	0	0	R32	2001
Scott Humphries	1994	1	260	1996	0	0	R128	1995
Sjeng Schalken	1994	1	11	2003	9	0	SF	2002
Nicolas Kiefer	1995	2	4	2000	6	0	SF	2006
Mariano Zabaleta	1995	1	21	2000	3	0	QF	2001
Olivier Mutis	1995	1	71	2003	0	0	R16	2004
Björn Rehnquist	1996	1	146	2002	0	0	R128	2002
Alberto Martín	1996	1	34	2001	3	0	R16	2006
Vladimir Voltchkov	1996	1	25	2001	0	0	SF	2000
Daniel Elsner	1996	3	92	2000	0	0	R64	2001
Wesley Whitehouse	1997	1	214	2004	0	0	-	-
Arnaud di Pasquale	1997	1	39	2000	1	0	R16	1999
Julien Jeanpierre	1998	1	133	2004	0	0	R32	2004
Fernando González	1998	1	5	2007	11	0	F	2007
Roger Federer	1998	1	1	2004	76	17	W	2003
David Nalbandian	1998	1	3	2006	11	0	F	2002
Kristian Pless	1999	1	65	2002	0	0	R32	2002
Guillermo Coria	1999	1	3	2004	9	0	F	2004
Jürgen Melzer	1999	1	8	2011	4	0	SF	2010
Jarkko Nieminen	1999	1	13	2006	2	0	QF	2005
Andy Roddick	2000	2	1	2003	32	1	W	2003
Paul-Henri Mathieu	2000	1	12	2008	4	0	R16	2002
Nicolas Mahut	2000	1	40	2008	0	0	R32	2006
Janko Tipsarevic	2001	1	8	2012	4	0	QF	2011
Carlos Cuadrado	2001	1	222	2006	0	0	-	-
Roman Valent	2001	1	300	2003	0	0	-	-
Gilles Müller	2001	1	42	2011	0	0	QF	2008
Clement Morel	2002	1	387	2007	0	0	-	-
Richard Gasquet	2002	2	7	2007	9	0	SF	2007
Todd Reid	2002	1	105	2004	0	0	R32	2004
Marcos Baghdatis	2003	1	8	2006	4	0	F	2006
Stanislas Wawrinka	2003	1	9	2008	3	0	QF	2010
Florin Mergea	2003	1	243	2005	0	0	-	-
Jo-Wilfried Tsonga	2003	1	5	2012	10	0	F	2008
Gaël Monfils	2004	3	7	2011	4	0	SF	2008
Andy Murray	2004	1	2	2009	25	1	W	2012
Donald Young	2005	2	38	2012	0	0	R16	2011
Marin Cilic	2005	1	9	2010	9	0	SF	2010
Jérémy Chardy	2005	1	25	2013	1	0	QF	2013
Ryan Sweeting	2005	1	64	2011	1	0	R64	2006
Alexandre Sidorenko	2006	1	145	2009	0	0	R128	2007
Martin Kližan	2006	1	26	2013	1	0	R16	2012
Thiemo de Bakker	2006	1	40	2010	0	0	R32	2010
Dušan Lojda	2006	1	161	2010	0	0	R128	2010
Brydan Klein	2007	1	174	2009	0	0	R64	2009
Vladimir Ignatic	2007	1	144	2012	0	0	-	-
Ricardas Berankis	2007	1	73	2011	0	0	R32	2011
Bernard Tomic	2008	2	27	2012	1	0	QF	2011
Yang Tsung-hua	2008	1	164	2012	0	0	-	-
Grigor Dimitrov	2008	2	31	2013	0	0	R64	2011
Yuki Bhambri	2009	1	174	2012	0	0	-	-
Daniel Berta	2009	1	637	2012	0	0	-	-
Andrey Kuznetsov	2009	1	68	2013	0	0	R64	2013
Tiago Fernandes	2010	1	371	2011	0	0	-	-
Agustin Velotti	2010	1	170	2012	0	0	-	-
Márton Fucsovics	2010	1	424	2012	0	0	-	-
Jack Sock	2010	1	125	2012	0	0	R32	2012
Jirí Veselý	2011	1	203	2013	0	0	-	-
Bjorn Fratangelo	2011	1	419	2013	0	0	-	-
Luke Saville	2011	2	337	2013	0	0	R128	2013
Oliver Golding	2011	1	418	2012	0	0	R128	2012
Kimmer Coppejans	2012	1	619	2013	0	0	-	-
Filip Peliwo	2012	2	516	2013	0	0	-	-
Nick Kyrgios	2013	1	328	2013	0	0	-	-

So... Where do I begin?! There are a lot of statistics you could collect from the data; a lot of them possibly useless, and some quite interesting! So, I'm just going to splurge out, in no particular order, all of the thoughts, factoids, and trivia that I discovered while creating the list. Here we go...

Best slam result
Win: 9
Final: 11
SF: 14
QF: 20
R16: 16
R32: 16
R64: 15
R128: 12
N/A: 25

That's right. Of 138 junior GS winners, only 9 have gone on to lift a GS title. That can of course be put down to the very best players like Federer, Sampras, Nadal, etc hogging them! Not everybody can have a turn!

12 junior winners have not made it past the first round of a GS, and 25 have not competed at GS level at all. Of course, these numbers are skewed quite a lot, because many players from the latter half of the 2000's are still either junior players, or have only recently started out on the pro circuit. You can expect many of them to start winning GS matches in the next few years.

11 players made it oh-so-close to winning a GS title, but fell at the final hurdle, so lets have a moment of silence for Phil Dent, Victor Pecci, Chris Lewis, Thomas Enqvist, Andrei Medvedev, Marcelo Ríos, Fernando González, David Nalbandian, Guillermo Coria, Marcos Baghdatis, and most recently Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.

Proportion of GS titles won by junior champions
In total 56 GS titles have been claimed by junior winners, out of the 180 total slams! Less than a third!
A large chunk of the "missing slams" go to Jimmy Connors (8), Sampras (14), Agassi (8), Nadal (11), Djokovic (6) all of whom never won a junior title.

Junior titles won by home nation
Australia: 24
France: 8
Britain: 0
USA: 12

I don't really have a point to make here... I just found it interesting.
In fact, if we include pre-Open Era events, Australia's figures are stunning. They started hosting junior events much earlier than any other slam, right back in 1922. In the 66 years between 1922 and the Open Era beginning in 1968, Australia won all but 5 of their own titles; the party poopers being GBR in 1954, USA in 1955 and 1959, FRA in 1965, and NZE in 1967. I guess nobody could be bothered to travel all the way to Oz to try and beat them!

Worst player to win a junior slam
This honour goes to Britain's James Baily, who only ever reached a ranking of 865 on the main tour, despite winning the Australian Open junior title!

There is one other player, Mike Falberg (USA), who it seems never even achieved an ATP ranking, but I think it would be bad taste to call him the worst player. I tried looking him up, but the only thing I could find about him on the whole internet is an article which suggests he committed suicide.

Most disappointing career
Although I don't know anything about him, on paper the award for biggest let-down must go to Mark Kratzmann. With 4 junior GS titles to his name, across 3 different continents, people must have been expecting big things from him. However he peaked at #50 in the rankings, and never even won a basic tour title, let alone a slam! If you think you have a better contender, please let me know!

Time to peak
The player who took the longest to reach his peak ranking was Australia's Paul McNamee, who peaked at #24 in 1986, 13 years after winning the Australian junior title in 1973!
Other honourable mentions are Fabrice Santoro (12 years), Andrei Pavel (12), Razvan Sabau (12), Jurgen Melzer (12), and Janko Tipsarevic (11).

As for quickest to peak, there are a number of players who peaked the year after their junior title, but their peaks are so pathetic they are not worth mentioning. The quickest to peak at a high level are John McEnroe and Andy Roddick, who both hit #1 three years after winning their first junior slam.

Time between junior and senior slam
Andy Murray holds the record for the longest gap between winning a junior slam and a 'real' slam; winning the USO in 2012, 8 years after his 2004 junior success! The next closest is his coach, Ivan Lendl, who took 6 years.

The quickest to convert a junior title into the real deal was Mats Wilander, who won the French Open in 1982, exactly a year after winning the junior title at the same event.

Oldest active junior champion
The oldest player to have won a junior title, who is still playing on the tour is Leander Paes at 39 years old! Although, admittedly he is playing on the doubles tour, not the singles. He won the Wimbledon junior title way back in 1990! I had no idea he used to be a good singles player...

Ranking milestones
In total, 8 junior slam winners have gone on to become world #1.
30 players have reached the top 10.
44 players have reached the top 20.
70 players have reached the top 50.
91 players have reached the top 100.

Junior "Grand Slam"
Only one junior player has ever completed the "Grand Slam" at a junior level; Sweden's Stefan Edberg, when he held all four titles in 1983!

The only other time when one country has held all four junior slams simultaneously, was in 2004 when Gael Monfils of France won the Australian Open, French Open and Wimbledon, while Tsonga still held the US Open from 2003.

That's all I've got right now. If I come up with any other useless stats I'll be sure to let you all know.

wat a hell of an article? how long did it take for you to compile this? really an great n interesting thread, well done.

The suicide part is real sad.

Haha, probably took me between 2 and 3 hours to put it all together, while multi-tasking, listening to music, half-watching TV.

I started out just taking a look at the list to see how things might shape up in the future for Oliver Golding and Filip Peliwo, (I support both Britain and Canada). Then it kinda snowballed from there, and I ended up putting together a whole load of stats!

But the bottom line is, winning a junior slam doesn't guarantee a player any success on the pro tour! As far as I can tell it is a complete lottery!

Stunning research, Cogen. :hatoff:

Monfils could have achieved the Junior slam if Troicki had not beaten him.

http://thetenniscult.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=challenger&action=display&thread=2008

Murray won the Boys Singles at USO 2004.

Paes was the Bronze Medal winner at 1996 Atlanta Olympics in Singles.

Winning a girl's slam is far more indicative of having a successful senior career.

I remember seeing a thread on tennisforum and not making top 100 is very rare (like 2 or 3 players) and the vast majority made top 50.

Although that depends on what people think is a successful career. I would imagine on this forum successful is 5 slams and multiple year ends at number 1, anything less is untalented journeyman.

Great work cogen - kudos to you

Why do people think junior slam winners rarely make senior slam winners? For me...

+ senior strength/conditioning
+ more at stake - mental pressure
+ grind of the full tour - again many cant take it
+ support network isn't the same past 18yo - they're more on their own

I'm more curious about what happens to the ones who win a junior slam title, but never even play in a senior slam, through not getting a high enough ranking/not qualifying.
There's got to be some interesting stories there - but I bet no-one's ever interviewed them.
There's a book project for someone!

lydian wrote:Great work cogen - kudos to you

Why do people think junior slam winners rarely make senior slam winners? For me...

+ senior strength/conditioning
+ more at stake - mental pressure
+ grind of the full tour - again many cant take it
+ support network isn't the same past 18yo - they're more on their own

Probably a mixture of all of these. I would imagine having been a top dog in the junior ranks and then starting on the bottom rung again knocks the confidence out of a lot of these players.

I just did a manual count on the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Grand_Slam_men's_singles_champions and I think there have been 52 different adult winners in the Open Era.

When you have 138 junior champions and only 52 adult champions, you can immediately see why so many juniors "failed" in their adult career. It's a different ball game and not everyone can be the best.

Also I mentioned there were 9 junior slam winners who won a proper slam, but you could add 3 more names to that list with an asterisk by them, and all of them happen to be Australian!

Rod Laver, Ken Rosewall, and John Newcombe all won boys titles before the Open Era began, and then proceeded to win adult titles in the Open Era!

Ken Rosewall won his first junior title back in 1950, and then won the very first slam of the Open Era, 18 years later in 1968! Of course, he had already won 4 slams in the Amateur Era before that, but still what a gap... He won his eighth and final slam in 1972; 22 years after his first junior slam!

Along with 11 slams for Rod Laver, 7 for John Newcombe (and 12 for Roy Emerson, just as the Amateur Era was ending), my god did Australia have a period of utter dominance around that time!

I wonder how many of the ones that didn't make it were out of choice and how many just weren't good enough.

How many players as soon as they realised they could make the top 100, but were never going to make the top 10, decided to go to University instead, or go and work on the city, or go travelling the world, or whatever.

Or, even...were good enough to be a top 10 player but didn't actually like tennis enough at the end.

Lots to dig through, but the take home seems to be that success (or the lack of) at Junior level is not much of an indicator of senior performance. Perhaps Junior Slam titles need to come with the sort of disclaimer you get in financial services adverts - 'past performance is no guarantee of future success'.

A quick scan through by decade suggests that there has been little change through time of junior slam champions going on to win senior GSs -

70s - 3 (Borg, McEnroe, Lendl)
80s - 3 (Wilander, Cash, Edberg)
90s - 1 (Federer)
00s - 2 (Roddick, Murray).

So of the 9 that have gone on to win senior GSs, 6 have multiple slam wins and 5 of them won 7 or more slams, so are well into the all time great territory. Not sure what that really shows, given that there are guys who did not win Junior slams who have done similarly well (Connors, Becker, Sampras, Nadal, Djoko) - I guess Becker and Nadal at least were so successful on the main tour by 17 that there was no incentive for them to play the Juniors at that point.

I guess one thing with junior success is that it sometimes comes from being the guy who develops physically earlier than the opposition. When at 16 or 17 you are able to overwhelm your junior opponents, it must come as a bit of a shock making the move on to the senior tour and finding that the guys there are as big and strong as you, plus have more experience and skill. Probably why a few of the dominant juniors (Monfils for one) haven't made the transition to the very top of the men's game.

JuliusHMarx wrote:I'm more curious about what happens to the ones who win a junior slam title, but never even play in a senior slam, through not getting a high enough ranking/not qualifying.
There's got to be some interesting stories there - but I bet no-one's ever interviewed them.
There's a book project for someone!

Yeah, even if we knock off all the young guys from 2008 onward (five years should be enough time to start competing in slams, right?) and if we discount the chap who committed suicide, there are still 13 players who never competed at slam level. Lets list them:

• Juan Herrera [ESP] (180) - No wikipedia article.
  
• Harry Britain [AUS] (330) - No wikipedia article.
  
• Ray Kelly [AUS] (288) - No wikipedia article.
  
• Pat Serret [AUS] (327) - No wikipedia article.
  
• Tim Trigeuiro [USA] (263) - No wikipedia article.
  
• Eduardo Velez [MEX] (215) - No wikipedia article.
  
• James Baily [GBR] (865) - No wikipedia article... BUT! ... He does get a brief mention in this 2004 BBC Sport article which warned us not too get our hopes up too much when Murray won the USO juniors!
  
• Wesley Whitehouse [RSA] (214) - "Whitehouse is now retired from the ATP Tour. In 1997 he was Wimbledon Tennis Junior Champion defeating Daniel Elsner of Germany 6–3, 7–6(6). He was also a finalist in both the Australian Open and US Open juniors in the same year. He reached a career-high singles ranking on the ATP Tour of World No. 214." ... That explains everything, then... NOT! Why the hell didn't he do better?!
  
• Carlos Cuadrado [ESP] (222) - He only played 8 tour level matches, then retired at the age of 22... and became Svetlana Kuznetsova's coach! Maybe he decided competitive tennis was not for him?
  
• Clement Morel [FRA] (300) - No wikipedia article.
  
• Florin Mergea [ROM] (243) - Only played 6 tour level singles matches. He is currently ranked 76 in doubles, so it looks like he switched to be a doubles player. Such a strange choice after winning junior Wimbledon and being runner up in Australia!
  
• Uladzimir Ignatik [BLR] (144) - This guy is only 22 years old, and still actively trying to making it up the rankings, but it doesn't look like anything great will become of him. He recently went out in Q1 of the Australian Open qualifiers.
  

So yeah, there are a whole bunch of mystery men in there! Who knows what happened to them?!

All of the Australian guys up the top won their home tournament. Ray Kelly even won it twice in back-to-back years. This was back in the '70s... maybe they just didn't have the desire to leave Australia and travel all around the world on tour?

Agree with your last paragraph DH. Was more or less the point I wanted to make but much more eloquently put. Most of these older guys are going to be around for some time as well unlike in the juniors when they have to move on. So when that reality hits in their late teens I'm sure it causes quite a few to re-evaluate their ambitions.

Cogen, I'm not sure I can draw anything from it that you haven't but I have to say that is an absolute tour-de-force of an article!

Stunning work.

I second that. Great work Cogen

This is one hell of an article Cogen, thanks! I'm particularly surprised at Edberg, I had no idea that he'd managed all four.

dummy_half wrote:Lots to dig through, but the take home seems to be that success (or the lack of) at Junior level is not much of an indicator of senior performance. Perhaps Junior Slam titles need to come with the sort of disclaimer you get in financial services adverts - 'past performance is no guarantee of future success'.

They should have it etched onto the bottom of the trophies! Good comments though DH, especially the different stages of development issue, and it meshes well with lydian's points. If you develop earlier physically, then you can generally overpower your opponents and so you might become reliant on a physicality that won't be anywhere near enough on the main tour - I can imagine that'd make the transition even harder from a mental perspective. You're just not prepared for that step up, and your biggest advantage is immediately negated. Whereas if you need to scrap it out at junior level you may develop a better skillset rather than relying solely on power and find the transition easier, though of course that's a massive generalisation and probably not accurate!

Overall I'd suggest that mental attitude and application to training and improvement is by far the biggest factor - if you're truly driven and willing to make any sacrifice, you can go a long way in any field, not just tennis. Some people don't have it, others do...

Agree with Carrie and Murdoch.

Great read cogen.

Cuadrado had major injury issues i think - hence the very early retirement.

Thanks everyone. Glad you all found it an enjoyable read, and that my time wasn't completely wasted!

If we can draw one useful statistic from it, maybe it is this:

The 44 players who peaked inside the Top 20, did so in an average time of 6.5 years after their junior slam. Although in some cases it took up to 12 years, after 7 years it becomes a much less likely proposition.

So, come on Oli Golding... You have 5 more years to show us you are a real player!

Silver

My comment about physical development came because my kid brother played a decent level of junior football and one of his team mates was picked up by a pro team at age 13 because he was already 6' and 14 stone, so was able to just bulldoze his opponents. No need to develop much skill and technique then, but it isn't going to stand you in good stead at 19 when everyone else is big and strong plus had to develop some skill to stand out from the crowd.

I wonder if this is why those who do make the transition from talented junior to senior success tend to be more skillful players (Borg, Mac, Edberg, Federer) rather than the big guys.