Les Petits As is widely considered as one of the most important junior tennis tournaments in the world. Held in Tarbes, France, it is the unofficial world indoor championship in the Under-14 category. The list of singles winners, on the men’s side, includes well-known legends of our sport such as Rafael Nadal, Richard Gasquet, or Juan Carlos Ferrero. But rather than relying on just a couple of names, I wanted to take a wider view, and see, whether success at Les Petits As can serve as a predictor of success on the professional level.
Before going over the findings, there are a couple of choices I had to make that limit the number of players I considered. First, I decided to only look at the singles draws of Les Petits As, and the career high ATP singles rankings of the athletes in question. Second, I have defined success at Les Petits As as making the quarter-finals or better. This would give me 8 players per year, and with looking at 11 historic draws (years 2007-2017), 88 players total. A good enough sample size, but not overwhelming to do in an afternoon. Finally, I defined success on the professional tour as making the ATP Top 100 or better.
In short, is making the quarter-final of Les Petits As a sure-fire predictor of future professional success? It is not. Out of the 85 unique players – Francis Tiafoe, Borna Coric, and Nikolay Vylegzhanin made the quarter-final or better twice – 16 have made the ATP Top 100 as of April 14th, 2025. Here is the full list:
| Name | Nationality | LPA Result | Year of Result | Career High ATP Rank |
| Holger Rune | DEN | SF | 2017 | 4 |
| Luca Nardi | ITA | W | 2017 | 67 |
| Hamad Medjedovic | SRB | F | 2017 | 71 |
| Chun Hsin Tseng | TPE | W | 2015 | 83 |
| Miomir Kecmanovic | SRB | F | 2013 | 27 |
| Alex De Minaur | AUS | QF | 2013 | 6 |
| Alexei Popyrin | AUS | QF | 2013 | 23 |
| Francis Tiafoe | USA | W | 2012 | 10 |
| Mikael Ymer | SWE | QF | 2012 | 50 |
| Michael Mmoh | USA | SF | 2012 | 81 |
| Hubert Hurkacz | POL | QF | 2011 | 6 |
| Alexander Zverev | GER | SF | 2011 | 2 |
| Quentin Halys | FRA | W | 2010 | 54 |
| Borna Coric | CRO | SF | 2010 | 12 |
| Liam Broady | GBR | F | 2008 | 93 |
| Jiri Vesely | CZE | QF | 2007 | 35 |
16 out of 85 is a success rate of less than 20%. There are a few players, especially from the more recent editions of Les Petits As, who might still crack the Top 100; Harold Mayot, for example, who made the semifinals of the 2016 edition of Les Petits As, has a career high of 103. But the overall picture stays the same. If you pick a player at random, and all you know about him is that he made the quarter-finals of Les Petits As, there is a less than 1 in 5 chance that he’ll make it to the Top 100, based on this particular set of data.
In fact, picking a random quarter-finalist from the 11 editions of Les Petits As from 2007-2017, you’d be almost as likely to find someone, who didn’t earn an ATP ranking at all, as you would a future Top 100 player. 14 out of the 85 players have not achieved an ATP ranking in their career as of yet.
Finally, if we assign a ranking value of 0 to the players, who have not earned an ATP ranking, the median career best ranking for the 85 players is #215; roughly speaking a challenger-level player.
What is there to learn from the above exercise? If a player reaches the quarter-finals, or better, at Les Petits As, he will most likely earn at ATP ranking. But the likelihood of that player cracking the Top 100 is about 1 in 5. It’s a long and winding road to the top, even in tennis. Even the best 14 year olds are just at the start of their journey.
Michal's Musings 