Quote:
Originally Posted by daahdeedaa
I have a question on junior eligibility and practice strategy.
I'm starting to notice one of my top ranked 17 year old junior players is getting more frequent bad practice weeks. I imagine this is only going to get worse next year when the current crop of 18 year old is no longer in junior.
I've thought about having him play some AMA or FTs in lieu of JG1 events to increase their singles (non-junior) rankings when they need form. I imagine this will let me get them ranked or at least out of the junior practice pool where he can practice against 19 year olds.
2 questions, can I still play JGA/JGS events or will I have "lost" my eligibility? Has anyone tried this and found better practice results than staying "pure" junior and practicing only with your age group?
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If you're talking about Tisserand, then I suggest you play him in AMA events, maybe even Futures, before he graduates the junior tour.
I've done it before, on GW12 I had Anton Barth ranked around #700 in the world, and at the same time he finished the year ranked #1 in juniors too.
However, unfortunately it doesn't mean your player will start playing practice events with other seniors. Until Week 52 of the final year of junior eligibility (i.e. after the Casablanca Cup), all U18s play junior practices. It was a bit of an issue for Barth, because he was significantly better than most of the other juniors at the time, and so his practice weeks were barely scraping any exp, because he was winning 6-0 6-1, 6-1 6-1, 6-0 6-2 etc. all the time.
I know some managers deliberately hold back on using their experience points in the final year of junior eligibility if this looks like it's going to be the case, i.e. "store" exp (up to 20000 points) without using them to boost skill and service. That keeps things a little more even and, while it might mean you don't sweep all the junior competitions, it probably works better for long-term growth.