The Voice (Francistown)
Monnakgotla Mojaki
18 March 2008
Francistown — The Botswana Tennis Association (BTA) will for the second year running host top international and African tournaments. A record P1 Million is to be spent throughout the two-week tournament.
The International Tennis Federation (ITF) will, according to BTA Sports Development Officer, Tuelo Serufho, spend around P700 000 while the hosts are expected to raise P300 000.
Some, however, have questioned the BTA move to bid for tournaments that they hosted last year. To this end, Serufho told Voice Sport that there are a number of positives arising.
"According to ITF, we did a good job and we also stand a good chance of developing players and gaining more experience. As hosts, we will be able to have quite a large number of tournament participants. If we were going out we were only going to have six players taking part but now we will have more players competing," explained Serufho.
The tournaments will be played under two different categories; the first is the International Junior Championship of Botswana, which the host country has naming rights of annually. This is where Botswana will have at least 24 players. It will run from March 18 through 24.
"This tournament is open to every player in the world under the age of 18 and we will have 29 countries taking part. We could possibly have had more but some couldn't make the required grade. African players who compete here have to be ranked amongst the top 40 in Africa," Serufho explained just days after they revealed several joint sponsors for the tourney.
The BTA mouthpiece also revealed that their officials have had an opportunity to officiate at the continents most prestigious tournament. "Umpires will benefit a great deal because you won't have ITF sending people to just officiate, so our people will increase their number of games and stand a better chance of being graded higher. Local umpires who can only officiate in international tournaments that we host will benefit."
Serufho added: "We don't have referees in the gold category that means we now stand a good chance of having some of our people to be recommended by the two ITF referees that will be in the country when they submit their reports after the two competitions. We also have a deliberate plan to train our umpires because at the moment there is only Batisani Khiwa a white badge level II holder and we can only hope such tournaments will open doors for others."
After the ITF tournament, the African Junior Championships will commence. This highly rated African competition started way back in 1978 and it has only been in SADC countries five times. South Africa has hosted it twice and Botswana will now have hosted it twice too. The only country to have hosted it more is Ivory Coast which made it 11 consecutive times.
"In the past, players didn't qualify by competing and the trend has changed over the years as players now have to go through zonal qualifications and only the cream comes to the last one. Here we will have 27 countries," Serufho told voice sport
The last dice of the tournaments will be when the best battle for continental qualifications. Top four nations from under-16 will fight for a place in the Davis Cup to come later in the year. There will also be a place for the World Junior Championships.
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