Tennis | Top junior players descending on IMG Academy for prestigious Eddie Herr tournament
BRADENTON -- In every Eddie Herr International Junior Tennis Championship appearance, she has made it deeper than the previous year.
Ingrid Neel, a 16-year-old IMG Academy tennis player, reached the quarterfinals in the 12s division before advancing to the semifinals last year in the 16s.
When Monday's main draw begins for the prestigious junior tennis tournament at IMG, Neel will aim to improve her performance again.
But Neel, in her third year as a full-time IMG student, will do so in the 18s girls division for the first time.
"I definitely can try, and I believe I can do it," said Neel, who reached the final in doubles at the last weekend's Grade A ITF event in Mexico. "I've never played Eddie Herr 18s. Orange Bowl is right after, and they both are super, super tough, so every match is going to be incredibly tough and everyone is around the same level. ... I love playing Eddie Herr because the atmosphere is so cool and I know everyone at IMG, and they go behind their players and they cheer. ... It's like no other tournament. It's nice to be on home turf."
The qualifying draw began Wednesday, but the jewel of the event is next week when the main draw kicks off a weeklong tournament Monday in four different age divisions among the boys and girls.
Elite junior tennis players such as IMG's Michael Mmoh, who is fresh off capturing the Grade A ITF singles title in Mexico City last weekend, and the top two ranked girls players in China's Shilin Xu and IMG's Catherine
"CiCi" Bellis, are vying for a coveted Eddie Herr title in the tournament's 28th annual edition.
Past champions includes well-known professionals Maria Sharapova, Andy Roddick and Jelena Jankovic, just to name a few.
"Orange Bowl and Eddie Herr are probably the two biggest tournaments outside the slams," Weylu Chang, an IMG tennis coach and Eddie Herr tournament director, said. "They're both Grade I ITF events, and they just attract a lot of players. It's the time of year everything else kind of consolidates. ... Orange Bowl is split over two separate weeks where 12s and 14s play the Junior Orange Bowl and then the 16s and 18s play. They are also spread over multiple sites. This is a huge event and takes so much organizing, because we have 12s, 14s, 16s, 18s boys, girls all in the same site."
Players in the 18s on the boys and girls side will duke it out on clay, while the other divisions square off on hard courts.
Chang said the clay surface improves a player's all-around game and court movement the most. For Neel, the chance to shine on clay this week isn't a hindrance, because she's excelled on the surface in prior junior and pro tournaments.
"I definitely did prefer hard court up until about six months ago, and then I won my first junior international tournament on clay," Neel said. "And then I won my first pro tournament on clay. ... So it's becoming more and more my surface. ... I have an all-court game. I really like coming to net, and I think that's an advantage for me."
IMG events director Blake Ulrich said the tournament, which features 1,200 players from 85 different countries, is expected to draw 12,000 to 15,000 spectators for the 10 days.
"They're staying all around town, so hopefully it will provide some good economic impact into the community, too," Ulrich said.
This story was originally published November 27, 2014 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Tennis | Top junior players descending on IMG Academy for prestigious Eddie Herr tournament ."