IMG’s Kecmanovic repeats as Orange Bowl champ

Miomir Kecmanovic ended his junior career in style on Sunday.

The 17-year-old rolled past second-seeded Yibin Wu in straight sets, 6-3, 6-1, in the final of the Metropolia Orange Bowl International Tennis Championships on the clay courts at Frank Veltri Tennis Center.

With the victory, Kecmanovic became the third player to successfully defend his title in the event, joining Billy Martin (1973-74) and Harold Solomon (1969-70), in the 70-year-old tournament’s history. The IMG Academy trainee won his first ITF junior Grade A/1 event title at this event a year ago.

It also gives the 17-year-old a victory in three consecutive ITF top-tier junior tournaments. Kecmanovic won the Grade 1 Eddie Herr tournament title in Bradenton on Dec. 4 and the Abierto Juvenil Mexicano in Mexico City last month. His is the first boy since Austrian Dominic Thiem in 2011 to win the Herr and Grade A Orange Bowl titles back-to-back.

If anything, Kecmanovic was even stronger in Plantation than he had been on his home courts in Bradenton. The Serbian lost 23 games in six matches during the Orange Bowl tournament, including five in his first three matches. He faced only two set points during the week.

Wu was no match for Kecmanovic on Sunday. The tournament’s second seed had never won more than one match in a Grade A event until this event, which followed his playing six consecutive weeks in Asian events. He was broken on his first service game in the opening set and never recovered.

Kecmanovic was assured of ending the year No. 1 in the ITF junior boys rankings before the tournament began. He ended any speculation about his future by declaring during the week that this would be his last junior event.

Ninth-seeded Kaja Juvan of Slovenia won the girls 18s title, beating Russian Anastasia Potapova, 6-1, 6-4. Potapova, who also had locked up the year-ending world No. 1 ranking before the tournament began, announced after the loss that the Orange Bowl was her last junior event.

In the girls 16s on Saturday, unseeded Katie Volynets defeated No. 14 Imani Graham of Jacksonville to become the first to win the Eddie Herr and Orange Bowl titles at that division in the same year. American Steven Sun won the boys 16s by knocking off India’s Vikash Singh 3-6, 7-5, 6-1.

This story was originally published December 11, 2016 at 11:27 PM with the headline "IMG’s Kecmanovic repeats as Orange Bowl champ."