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A ball kid ready to gather any lost tennis balls. Taken in Montreal on July 27, 2026. (Rita Kamel, CityNews) <\/p>\nFrom hard-hitting serves to long rallies and the occasional cheeky drop-shot, there will be many reasons to have your eyes glued to the tennis courts of Montreal\u2019s IGA Stadium starting in just a few days.<\/p>\n
But among some of the world\u2019s top-ranked tennis players will be the unsung heroes of the annual National Bank Open: the ball kids.<\/p>\n
Ball kids are young athletes who will have an important job during the tournament; they will be picking up the tennis balls and giving them to the players without drawing any attention to themselves.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s way more technical than people think,\u201d said ball kid Lucas Younan. \u201cYou have to be invisible but you have to move the balls from one side of the court to the other. So it\u2019s way harder than we think and you have to think a lot. You have to watch all around the court to see where the ball is and to see where other ball boys are and if the ball is with them.\u201d<\/p>\n
A ball kid ready to gather any lost tennis balls. Taken in Montreal on July 27, 2026. (Rita Kamel, CityNews) <\/p>\n
Those kids get to experience the surreal feeling of being on the court while history is being made.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen there\u2019s Canadian players, the crowd goes crazy when there\u2019s a good point. And then we\u2019re on the court, and we\u2019re trying not to smile. Because it\u2019s just like an unreal feeling,\u201d said Sophia Craciunescu, a ball kid for the fifth time in a row.<\/p>\n
Nicolas Beaudet, now the ball kid supervisor, himself started as a ball kid in 1997. <\/p>\n
\u201cYou need kids passionate about tennis, they want to be close to the players, they need to be athletic. They throw the ball, that\u2019s the only place in the world that we throw the ball, so they need to be very precise, very strong, quick, and be very focused on the court and understand what\u2019s going on,\u201d said Beaudet.<\/p>\n
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Nicolas Beaudet, the Ball Kids Supervisor at the IGA stadium in Montreal on July 27, 2026. (Rita Kamel, CityNews) <\/p>\n
There will be eight groups of 12 ball kids. But by the end of the tournament, there will only be two groups going to the final singles and double matches.<\/p>\n
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A ball kid ready to gather any lost tennis balls. Taken in Montreal on July 27, 2026. (Rita Kamel, CityNews)<\/p>\n
This year the stadium got a new upgrade.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to have LED screens on the centre court,\u201d said Marc- Antoine Farly, the senior, corporate, strategic and communication manager of Tennis Canada. \u201cWe\u2019re going to have breakpoints, second serve, first serve. We\u2019re going to see this being animated on screen. It\u2019s going to totally change what people see normally.\u201d<\/p>\n
The tournament is presented by Rogers Communications, the parent company of CityNews.<\/p>\n
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\t\t\t\tNicolas Beaudet, the ball kid supervisor, coaching his team at IGA Stadium in Montreal on July 27, 2026. (Rita Kamel, CityNews) <\/p>\n
\t\tKeep it Factual<\/p>\n
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