What makes the difference?

[Michael Bluth]

These are names of players you have undoubtedly heard of: Roger Federer, Guillermo Coria, Gael Monfils, Richard Gasquet All were great juniors, either Junior no.1s or junior slam winners/Orange Bowl champions or both. They went on to become pros playing at the highest level, top 10/20/ players.

Here are some other names: Donald Young, Sergiy Stakhovsky, Timothy Neilly, Martin Klizan. All top juniors who could not translate their results to the pro circuit.

What separtates the top juniors who don't repeat their success on the junior circuit on the ATP from those who do?

[Seblad2k8]

great thread not sure what the answer is

maybe more physicaly demanding and just more demanding in shot making and shot selection.

also the pace would be higher

[SoCal10s]

in tennis they say "speed kills" -- so this means the ball speed you can hit and also the foot speed you can have... after the Jr. level if those kids who want to make it do not work on increasing SPEED they are truly not going anywhere in the pros..
the second thing is keep improving.. being super good in the Jr. those tend to rest on their past and stop trying harder to reach that next level.. when you stop trying to improve,you're dead ...

[LeeD]

Well, in motocross, tis injuries.
But get bored, find other interests, including opposite sex, new sports, awareness of mortality, hate to travel and adapt to new cultures, strange court times upsetting the whole system, miss mommy, a whole slew of reasons.

[TennisCoachFLA]

Each individual has a different combination of reasons they did or did not make it. Pro tennis is such a brutal selection process that weeds out and weeds out as kids move from level to level.

The answer "speed of both feet and shots" is a good one. Even at ages 4-5 you see kids who both hit the ball great. They are about the same size, same coordination. Yet one kid's shots 'pop' off the racquet and the other kid's do not.

I remember a tennis writer who saw a lot of Anna K. and the Williams sisters as they developed. He wrote way back then that Anna appeared to have the game yet her shots lacked the pop of the top women. He said the Williams sisters had that pop from the very first time he saw them.

[tenniscp]

Originally Posted by Michael Bluth

These are names of players you have undoubtedly heard of: Roger Federer, Guillermo Coria, Gael Monfils, Richard Gasquet All were great juniors, either Junior no.1s or junior slam winners/Orange Bowl champions or both. They went on to become pros playing at the highest level, top 10/20/ players.

Here are some other names: Donald Young, Sergiy Stakhovsky, Timothy Neilly, Martin Klizan. All top juniors who could not translate their results to the pro circuit.

What separtates the top juniors who don't repeat their success on the junior circuit on the ATP from those who do?

In case of Donald Young, I think, the problem lies in the fact that he did not pay his dues in the beginning and had to go back and redo what was done wrong. Thus the painful transition process from juniors to pros became even more extended. He had to go back and try to break into top 100 through futures and challengers.

Martin Klizan was a very talented lefty from Slovakia and the last time I saw him, he was still a brilliant shot maker, but physically very weak and slender. He goes through patches of brilliance and utter desparation through the duration of one set, never mind a demanding three setter.

Every one junior tennis prodigy's path is very unique, so there is no one answer as to why where one succeeds, another fails.

However, a post below makes a good point about the speed of the ball and foot speed. Excellent observation! Pretty much it boils down to the fact that tennis became a running sport, so superior athletes can make it to the top, no matter how unorthodox their technique may be. A perfect example is Nadal. If one begins to disect his technical foundation and stroke production, one can find so much wrong with it. Yet, he managed to make tennis a physical battle like nobody has ever done before. Nadal is Lleyton Hewitt of 21century, bigger, faster, stronger.