It's one of the central questions that defines sports. In team sports, every franchise devotes a significant portion of its resources to scouting, acquiring, and developing the next generation of stars. Fans are far from immune to the allure of this question, as the NFL and NBA drafts are subject to considerable speculation even years in advance (a Google search for 2018 NFL Mock Draft, analysis of an event that is over two years away, returns nearly 100,000 results, with just over 90,000 for the NBA). The draft is somewhat less-publicized in baseball (though I believe it's still televised on the MLB Network), but several popular websites (such as Baseball America) are completely dedicated to scouting and projecting amateur and minor league players.
This side of sports becomes trickier when you look at individual competitions, such as tennis. Outside of national tennis federations (which are not fully cohesive competitive units), there are no teams searching for the next big thing, so curious fans of the sport are left on their own in seeking out prospects to a much greater extent than they are in football or basketball.
That's not to say that the fans are completely without resources; information about the Challenger, Futures, and Junior tours can easily be found on the ATP and ITF websites, and the ITF even publishes junior rankings. But following the ATP World Tour itself takes a good bit of time, and most fans will direct their attention where it has the best chance of paying off - watching the major events and waiting for young players to produce results there.
There is one simple compromise that can be struck between focusing on the biggest events in tennis and keeping an eye on young players: the Junior Grand Slams. Held during the second week of each Slam (once the mens' and womens' singles and doubles draws are winnowed down and therefore take up fewer courts), the Junior Slams offer young players a chance to compete against their peers on a stage that's at least adjacent to the most important courts in the sport. And for the fans, moving from the main singles draw on the Slam's website to a junior singles draw requires just two clicks of a mouse.
The question then becomes: Is this an effective way of finding future tennis stars? What does it mean for a player to win a Junior Grand Slam title?
Let's find out.
