- Petits As
The Petits As (English: "Small champions") is a premier junior
tennis tournament for players aged 12-14. It is held inTarbes ,France . It is often considered to be theEurope an equivalent of the Orange Bowl inFlorida ,United States due to the high number of international players that it attracts.The event has seen a number of its champions go on to become slam winners, including
Rafael Nadal ,Michael Chang ,Martina Hingis , andKim Clijsters . Due to the relatively restrictive age range, few players have won the title more than once, although Hingis andTimea Bacsinszky have both done so. Most recently, upcoming Spanish playerCarlos Boluda became the first boy to do so.The tournament is played on indoor Green Set (hard) courts. Roughly 7,000 players enter the pre-qualifying tournaments held across France, with that number being narrowed down to 350 for the final qualifying stage, and 64 for the final tournament. [cite web|url=http://www.lespetitsas.fr/presentation/index.php?tmpl=logistic.html&titleName=logistic
title=INTRODUCTION Logistic and Budget|accessdate=2008-03-04] The event is regulated by theInternational Tennis Federation (ITF) and has businesses such as Head,Eurosport ,Coca-Cola , andPeugeot amongst its portfolio of partners. [cite web|url=http://www.lespetitsas.fr/infos/index.php?tmpl=partners.html&titleName=partners
title=Partners|accessdate=2008-03-04]Results
Boys' singles
Girls' singles
Exhibitions
The tournament often features retired and/or active players making appearances in exhibition matches in the evening preceding the final day of play. It is common for upcoming and veteran French players to be present. In recent tournaments, players present have included:
*2004:Yannick Noah andHenri Leconte .
*2005:Juan Carlos Ferrero (a former champion) andDavid Nalbandian , who replaced compatriot andFrench Open championGastón Gaudio at the last minute.
*2006:Rafael Nadal andFabrice Santoro .
*2007:Richard Gasquet andGaël Monfils .
*2008: Fabrice Santoro andMarc Gicquel , afterPaul-Henri Mathieu andJo-Wilfried Tsonga withdrew. Mathieu, who had injured himself at the2008 Australian Open , signed autographs instead.References
External links
* [http://www.lespetitsas.fr/ Les Petits As website] fr icon en icon
* [http://www.lespetitsas.com/programmation/Draw_Boys%20Singles%20Main%20Draw.pdf 2008 Boys' Singles draw]
* [http://www.lespetitsas.com/programmation/Draw_Girls%20Singles%20Main%20Draw.pdf 2008 Girls' Singles draw]
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