Canadians a party of one at the French Open junior event

PARIS – For all the millions Tennis Canada has spent on its national program since it started up in 2007, the pool of kids ranked high enough to get into junior Grand Slams is a little thin at the moment.

On the boys' side, which has always been quieter than the girls' side except when Milos Raonic and Vasek Pospisil were on the scene in 2008, there are a total of ... none.

The girls' situation is only very, very slightly better.

One.

Montreal's Françoise Abanda is the No. 10 seed in the girls' singles – not because of lack of merit, but simply because she has played just one junior event since the beginning of 2013, last year's U.S. Open (where she lost in the second round)

A persistent shoulder injury put Abanda on the shelf. Then, because her junior ranking fell off the charts and she didn't meet the minimum WTA Tour ranking to be eligible to play the juniors, she wasn't eligible to play in Australia this year.

But she's back.

Contrast that with just two years ago, when Abanda, Genie Bouchard, Carol Zhao and Erin Routliffe were among the junior girls.

Bouchard, obviously, has hit the big time. Zhao is at Stanford playing college tennis, and Routliffe is at the University of Alabama.

Here's how they looked then (and, it should be noted, Abanda defeated Belinda Bencic, who is her age, in that event. Bencic is now in the top 100 on the WTA Tour).

Does she have a shot at the title? Of course she does. Not only is Abanda really good, but many of the young players who are still junior-eligible – players like Taylor Townsend, Bencic and Ana Konjuh, to name just three – don't play the junior events any more.

As a warmup, Abanda isn't playing a junior event. She was in Maribor, Slovenia playing a $25,000 pro tournament this week. Abanda lost in the semifinals to Yvonne Neuwirth of Austria.