Windhoek — The inaugural edition of the FNB Tennis Development Tourney got off to a flying start at Central Tennis Courts under the auspices of the Namibia Tennis Association (NTA) in Windhoek last weekend.

The environment created was clearly designed to determine the ultimate success or failure of the event and it's always easy with 8 tennis courts located at the biggest tennis stadium in Namibia with 3 recently resurfaced courts complemented by a great team of development officers who burnt the midnight oil to make the tourney a great success.

The format was also crucial as the organizers wanted to make sure the players enjoy enough game time, while competing against their own age group notably in the U-10, U-12 and U-14 age groups to allow for substantial individual competitions, while including a team format to make sure the players do not only play for themselves but their school teams.

For every match that a player won, he or she received a token at the end of the tourney, while the school with the most tokens was also rewarded for their troubles - thus encouraging maximum participation from schools to give themselves a better change of winning medals.

It was very pleasing to notice participating players from the development programme doubling up as officials and assisting with the scorekeeping. Players who do well in the development tournaments and those who have been identified have the opportunity to compete for a place in the performance squad and only the best 2 players per age group are selected from the squad to be entered into the NTA junior tournaments.