The juniors’ finalists are set at the 2024 US Open. After a full day of semifinals, the No. 1 and No. 12 boys’ singles players advanced to the final. On the girls’ singles side, the No. 3 player was upset by a Brit on a hot streak, while the No. 7 player advanced. The boys’ doubles final will feature the No. 1 pair against an unseeded duo. In girls’ doubles, none of the seeds made the final.
For details, read on.
Singles
In boys’ singles, Rafael Jodar was the first player to clinch a championship berth on Friday when he upset the 2024 Australian Open boys’ champion, Rei Sakamoto, 6-3, 6-1, in the boys’ semifinals. The 17-year-old from Madrid had only 12 unforced errors compared to Sakamoto’s 27. In the final, Jodar will try to become the third Spaniard in four years to win the US Open boys’ title before he heads to the University of Virginia in January.
In the championship match, Jodar will meet the No. 1 seed, Nicolai Budkov Kjaer of Norway who defeated Charlie Robertson of Great Britain in the other boys’ semifinal, 6-3, 6-3. Budkov Kjaer became the first Norwegian in history–male or female–to make a US Open junior final.
In that semifinal, Robertson fought valiantly to hold serve in the seventh game of the second set, one that featured four deuces and a 27-shot rally that he won to save the second break point and narrow his opponent’s advantage, 4-3. Alas, Budkov Kjaer beat the Scot in the next two games to seal the win.
Meanwhile, in girls’ singles, 15-year-old Mika Stojsavljevic of Great Britain cranked out her second major upset in two days when she upended American Iva Jovic, 6-0, 3-6, 6-3, in Friday’s semifinal. Last week, Jovic, 16, generated significant buzz when she advanced to the second round of the women’s draw. But the excitement surrounding Stojsavljevic has increased significantly now, especially after the 6-foot-tall 15-year-old also ousted the girls’ No. 1 seed, Emerson Jones of Australia in straight sets in the third round on Wednesday. The last British woman to win a US Open girls’ singles title was Heather Watson in 2009.
In the championship match, Stojsavljevic will meet Japan’s Wakana Sonobe, the 16-year-old southpaw who beat Stojsavljevic’s doubles partner, Mingge Xu, 6-4, 6-4, in Friday’s other semifinal.
Doubles
In boys’ doubles, Denis Petak of Czechia and Flynn Thomas of Switzerland upset the No. 4-seeded French-Romanian duo of Thomas Faurel and Luca Preda, 6-3, 7-5, to advance to the boys’ doubles final. The other boys’ doubles semifinal match was between the No. 1 and No. 3 pairs, and the top seed, Sakamoto and Maxim Mrva, prevailed.
For Sakamoto, the victory was sweet revenge because it enabled him to defeat his foe from the singles semifinal, Budkov Kjaer, and his partner, Henry Bernet of Switzerland, 7-5, 6-3.
In girls’ doubles, Columbia University-bound Malak El Allami of Morocco and her partner, Emily Sartz-Lunde of Norway, advanced to the final by defeating the Czech pair of Tereza Krejcova and Eliska Tichackova, 6-3, 6-4.
In the other girls’ doubles semifinal, Julie Pastikova of Czechia and Julia Stusek of Germany came back after losing the first set, 1-6, to shut out the No. 7 seed, Joy De Zeeuw of the Netherlands and Hannah Klugman of Great Britain, 6-0 in the second set, and win the 10-point tiebreak, 10-5.
