Liam Broady starts the first day of the rest of his life today, after his junior singles final defeat, and the question hanging over him is: where does he go next?
The answer may be not very far because there is no guarantee that British players, or those from around the world for that matter, can start making indents in the senior ranks. But at least Broady has earned the chance.
“Broady made a great effort at Wimbledon and has shown that he can deal with pressure,” says David Felgate, former coach to Tim Henman. “There should now be a clear plan of where they want to go with him, whether to continue in the juniors or step out on to the main tour.
“Not every one of the best 18-year-olds in the world is playing every Grand Slam junior event. But I think we make too much of the juniors and what they are doing. We don’t know who the next best one is going to be at Old Trafford, or our top junior golfer or junior athlete. Tennis gets way more exposure than junior events in other world sports.”
Since the game went open in 1968, the Wimbledon boys’ championship has produced just four winners who went on to become senior champions — Bjorn Borg, Pat Cash, Stefan Edberg and Roger Federer.
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The best performance by a Wimbledon junior champion in the main draw this year came from Gael Monfils of France, the ninth seed, who lost in the third round against the qualifier Lukasz Kubot of Poland. Another Frenchman and former junior winner, Jeremy Chardy, was drawn against Novak Djokovic in the first round.
There is no theme to the careers of junior champions. But if you take the example of Donald Young, the American left-hander who won the title in 2007, it just shows what can go wrong.
This year the United States Tennis Association held an elimination tournament, the prize for which was a wild card into the French Open. Young was beaten in the final and missed out but did play Wimbledon with a ranking of 111 and lost in the first round to compatriot Alex Bogomolov. But only a few months earlier Young had beaten Andy Murray in Indian Wells.
One coach who will watch with interest which way the runner-up goes is Tony Pickard, who helped Edberg to two Wimbledon titles.
Pickard says of Broady: “What he has to do next is win matches at Challenger level because when I have seen him play there he has struggled. Doing well at junior Wimbledon does not give you the God-given right to to win Challengers or other tournaments.
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“The other important thing is that he gets the right advice now, to progress his game and all the aspects that he has to improve. He is a young man and must be prepared to listen.
“He is at the bottom rung of the ladder — you have to work hard to get five steps up, and it is a long ladder.”
Join tennis correspondent Barry Flatman at 12.45pm as he sets up the Wimbledon men's final