Understanding OTA Junior Tournaments - Part 1

Hi everyone,

There are a lot of questions around the types of tournaments, different tiers, what your child should participate in and when to move up to more challenging tournaments. This can be a complicated subject and it can be quite personal depending on your child's age, level of competitiveness, and over all playing skill level... I really don't have a short and simple answer for everyone, but I will try to explain as much as I can and direct you to some reading materials. so hopefully give you give you some ideas on how to move forward.

This is part 1 where I talk about the U8, U9, U10 group.

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Junior tournaments basically breaks into two big groups.

You have everything under the age of 10, which plays in Kids Tennis format that consist of:
U8 Red ball on 1/2 court
U9 Orange ball on 3/4 court
U10 Green dot ball on full court

Then you have under 12 and older, which plays in regular ball, full court:
U12 Regular ball on full court
U14 Regular ball on full court
U16 ...
U18 ...
Etc...

In the U10 or younger stages, there are generally two types of tournaments. Rogers Rookie Tour and Future Stars Tour.

Rogers Rookie Tour
-Designed for entry-level juniors who is getting into tournament for the first time
-Player get minimum of three matches
-No ranking points been tracked
-Does not need to be a registered OTA tournament player

More info:
Rogers Rookie Tour page
Rogers Rookie Tour Handbook
Tournament schedule and summery

Future Stars Tour
-For more advanced U9/U10 junior tennis player
-Ranking points tracked
-OTA tournament player membership required

More info:
Future Stars Tour page (handbook)
Tournament schedule and summery

Besides these two tours, there are other special event such as Future Stars Championship Series, or individual club hosted tournaments in singles, doubles, or team format. Some are open to sign up, some are by invitation only.

I would highly recommend everyone to go to the website listed to read up these materials. It will provide you more information in terms of tournament format, rules, ranking points system (if applicable).

Please feel free to comment below if you have more information to share!

Peter Liu