Last week, the Boca West Country Club in Boca Raton, Fla. hosted the Rendez-vous à Roland-Garros, in partnership with Longines. This week, we'll take a closer look at what happened in South Florida, including profiles of the Paris-bound champions who will compete for a wild card into the junior Grand Slam, an examination of this worldwide event's rapid evolution and interviews with the players, professionals and personalities who help make this unique red-clay tournament happen.
BOCA RATON, Fla.—“Boca’s tough,” Rob Norton, head pro at the Boca West County Club, said with confidence. “There’s a lot of good players down here.”
Norton’s words could be read as a comment on the Rendez-vous à Roland-Garros, in partnership with Longines, the prestigious junior tournament held last week at Boca West. Sixteen boys and 16 girls from around the United States converged in south Florida to compete on red clay for places in French Open play-in events in Paris.
But in truth, Norton was referring to the tennis hotbed that is Boca Raton itself.
“There’s hundreds of players around the academies down here,” Norton said after watching two of them reach the final four of the boys’ competition. “To represent Boca is huge.”
Those two players, Michael Heller and Christian Alshon, train out of the Magallan-Martinez Tennis Academy and have known each other since they were 8 years old. They are longtime friends, each keeping close tabs on what the other is planning to do after graduation. They are also longtime foes—“I’ve played him a million times,” Heller says. “It’s very competitive between us.”