Juan-Corné Brand was one game away from the national U19 title.

Then Joseph Feast stopped him.

Brand had a match point in the fourth game of their Growthpoint South African Junior Nationals clash in Cape Town, but Western Province’s Feast fought back to take it 12-10. Suddenly, everything rested on a fifth game.

Brand made that one count.

Five games for the title

The final had swung back and forth from the start.

Feast took the opening game 11-3 before Brand responded with consecutive 12-10 wins. Feast’s fourth-game fightback forced the decider, but Brand moved ahead early and closed it out 11-6.

The final score was 3-11, 12-10, 12-10, 10-12, 11-6, giving the Northern player the national U19 title.

It was not his first national junior crown either.

Brand won the Growthpoint U17 national title in 2024 before stepping up to the U19 division, where he entered this year’s tournament as the top seed.

From Midrand to the World Juniors

Brand is 18, was born in Pretoria and lives in Midrand. He joined the professional PSA circuit in 2023.

Only weeks before his Cape Town victory, he represented South Africa at the 2026 World Junior Squash Championships in Canada.

His individual championship ended in the first round against Hong Kong China’s Ivan Jia Yu Chang, but Brand continued in the team competition. Among his results was a five-game victory over the Netherlands’ Quinten van Es, where he came back from 2-1 down to win.

That makes the national result particularly satisfying to watch from home. The Midrand teenager returned from competing against some of the world’s best juniors and finished his next major junior championship with a South African title.

The Bottom Line

Juan-Corné Brand had already won at U17 level, represented South Africa internationally and begun testing himself on the professional circuit.

His first U19 national title still required one more test: losing a match point, being dragged into a fifth game and finding a way to finish it.

At 18, that is another useful result to add to a squash career that is already moving beyond the junior court.