U.S. junior World Team Cup team wins fifth all-time title, first in seven years

For the first time in seven years, the U.S. juniors are World Team Cup champions. The American squad, made up of Charlie Cooper, Sabina Czauz, Tomas Majetic and Max Wong won a fifth all-time title to close out this year's competition on Sunday with a 2-0 win over Australia. 

The Americans were last victorious in the competition in 2017, in a year that marked the last of three consecutive titles from 2015-17. But this year's victory marked the end of a long, redemptive road for the squad. After that run of dominance, the U.S. did not field a junior team in 2018 or 2019. It placed last in the field of eight teams in 2021, and seventh in 2022. Last year, guided by the experience of Cooper, Majetic and Wong—all of whom had featured on one or both of those new-look teams—and their retiring coach, Paul Walker, the team won its pool and went all the way to the final, finishing runner-up to Great Britain.

The goal for 2024 was to finish business under the leadership of coach Kevin Heim, the longtime coach of the U.S. quad team at the event, as well as the addition of the team's only rookie in Czauz.

"Coming into this year we put in a lot of work," Cooper, 16, told the ITF website after the match. "We had that one goal in mind of getting gold, so we all knew that it would take all four of us to get it done and we had to believe in each other and stay humble. We had to put a lot of work in and I couldn't be happier to get it done here in Turkey.”

That resolved showed on the court: They went 3-0 (9-0 in matches) in round-robin play against Australia, Great Britain and the Netherlands, and in particular, lost just 12 games in six sets in a rematch of last year's final. In fact, in their five ties in the week overall, the Americans lost just one match in 14 played (the doubles against Brazil in the semifinals, which played no role in the outcome of the result, as the Americans had already clinched the match). 

The championship against Australia was a repeat of what transpired in the group stage. Majetic rolled to start in a 6-0, 6-3 win over Jin Woodman (in round-robin, he won 6-1, 6-3) before Cooper served as the clincher with a 6-2, 6-1 win over Benjamin Wenzel (he'd won 6-4, 6-2 previously). The doubles was not played.