Rwanda will host the 2022 ITF Junior World Tennis Tour slated for February 14-18, the Tennis governing body has confirmed. The ITF World Tennis Tour Juniors gives players aged 18 and below the opportunity to travel to different parts of the globe and develop their talent in Tennis. This tournament, which comes to the country for the third time in five years, was supposed to take place in July last year but a hike in covid-19 left forced the federation to reschedule it to February this year. Featuring over 650 tournaments in 140 countries, the Tour sees players compete across six levels of tournament – from JA (which includes the junior Grand Slams) through to J1, J2, J3, J4 and J5 (the lowest grade). The ITF World Tennis Tour Juniors provides a launch pad for the best players to go on and achieve success in the professional game. The top eight juniors at the end of the year go head-to-head at the prestigious season-ending ITF World Tennis Tour Junior Finals. The ITF also runs two flagship international junior team competitions – the ITF World Junior Tennis Finals (14 & under) and the Junior Davis Cup and Junior Billie Jean King Cup by BNP Paribas Finals (16 and under). Philibert Ndugu, the Technical Director of the Rwanda Tennis Federation (RTF), told Times Sport that this year’s tournament is expected to attract between 64 and 100 participants. Ndugu also said that this competition will be hosted at IPRC-Kigali. The venue is home to six Tennis courts. Rwanda last hosted the ITF Junior World Tour in 2019 and 2016.
