There are a handful of not so well known teenage talents on the tour that fans and bettors should be aware of.

Everyone knows who Caroline Wozniacki is as she runnered-up the 2009 US Open.  Everyone also knows who Melanie Oudin is because she made a cinderally run in Flushing Meadows in her home country's Slam.  However there are some other teenagers that look like they could make some noise next year on tour and it's a good idea to know who they are beforehand so that you can jump the gun in the futures market.

Here's the teenaged players that tennis fans and sports bettors will already know something about (all rankings October 19, 2009):

Melanie Oudin, ranked 44th
Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, ranked 30th
Urszula Radwankska, ranked 68th
Caroline Wozniacki, ranked 6th
Sorana Cirstea, ranked 39th
Michelle Larcher De Brito, ranked 112th

Here's a couple teenaged players on the WTA tour that you might not be familiar with yet as they have both made recent strides:

Polona Hercog, ranked 72nd, DOB: January 21st, 1991
Petra Martic, ranked 82nd, DOB: January 19th, 1991

Polona Hercog (Slovakia):

Polona Hercog started the 2009 WTA tour season ranked around 240th in the world and she has made steady ground over the year.  Her first sigificant achievement this year was making the round of 16 in Marbella, which she followed up with an ITF victory in Italy, and a quarterfinal appearance on tour in Morocco (Fes). 

She has been very consistent this year as she has steadily moved up the rankings and she added another ITF title in Croatia before taking out Alisa Kleybanova (ranked 23rd at the time of the match) in the first round of the French Open.  Though Hercog failed to qualify for Wimbledon just prior to that she won another ITF tournament, this time in the Czech Republic, and for good measure she won another one in Italy (all matches for the latter were won in straight sets, no tie breaks played).

She is clearly above ITF calibre tennis and qualified for the US Open as a direct entrant.

Her current rank of 72 is a career high.

Petra Martic (Croatia):

Petra Martic started 2009 ranked about 210th in the world and she has also made steady progress.  She flirted with tour events in Indian Wells, Miami, and Barcelona early in the year but got spanked bad enough that she retreated back to ITF levels.

This teenager has Grand Slam match victories to her credit as she won her opening round matches at both the US Open and the French Open this year.  She might be a natural clay courter as her most notable result came in Budapest where she made the quarterfinals and she took out top 50 player Lucie Safarova in doing so.

Martic also won a $100,000 ITF event in Italy in September, incidentally beating Polona Hercog en route.  She does not appear to be the winner that Hercog is at this point however.

Martic's current rank of 84 is also a career high.

Others to be aware of:

Zarina Diyas, ranked 211th, DOB: October 18, 1993

Zarina Diyas will be in Grand Slam fields in 2010.

Kristina Mladenovic, ranked 256th, DOB: May 14th, 1993

Mladenovic is not as good as Diyas but she is still only 16 years of age.

If you bet challenger events, which you can at bet365, then be sure to keep on eye on these key young talents that currently mix between ITF tourneys and tour events.

Go to bet365 to bet on WTA tennis.