All down to the deciding doubles with Georgie losing 1 & 1 and Jodie winning 0 & 3

Big congrats to the girls. And good luck in the final !

An impressive effort from Georgie pushing her strong opponent (winner of a G1 last month) for nearly 3 hours

U16 Final

Russia 1 GBR 0

Evgeniya Levashova d. Georgina Axon 7-6(3) 2-6 6-4

Ah pity. But good stuff by Jodie and Georgie.

sorry, not sure if this is the right thread but putting it here as Holly and Kylie have been mentioned already. Open Super 12 Auray final - Holly Fischer v Kylie Bilchev.

watched www.youtube.com/watch yesterday and noticed the umpire looked remarkably young. do children umpire in junior matches? if so, that is just so cute!

Well, they always have youngsters umpiring at Les Petits As, which is the top young tournament.

My son umpired a whole heap of Petits As matches when he was 15.

It's part of the umpire training programme for youngsters. They start when they're 14 and umpire adult and junior matches, first at a county level, then regional, then national. Usually takes two/three years to make it to national level. They go away for training weekends, and have to umpire a certain number of matches, and pass written tests, as well as practical ones. It's all very structured.

They're not on their own at the Petits As, though. There's a guy in charge (with several underlings) who will go round and monitor how they're doing (and obviosuly intervene if there's a big problem) and give them a report at the end at what they did well or not etc. etc. They all have a good time, it's fun.

Other youngster tournaments often have the same thing. It depends if the tournament has been selected by the local umpiring commission that year to be part of the training programme or not.

A funny story re youngsters umpiring:

My son is down at the Petits As, along with the others young umpires. They are reminded that one of the rules is that bad language must not be used on court, and the staged warnings that have to be given.

They are also told that, obviously, this does not matter what language the swearing is in (can't penalise French or English players just because people understand them).

But of course there are tons of foreign players there and the kids don't speak/understand their languages.

So the powers that be (love 'em) give the teenage umpires a list of the worst 20 swear words in a whole heap of languages, along with phonetic pronunciation guides.

Well, I don;t think anyone was warned. . . .

But, quelle surprise and stone the crows, the kids all came away from that week having practiced themselves perfect and my son can now swear quite proficiently in a whole host of foreign languages. Quite useful, in fact . . .