8 tennis players leave for junior championships

Harare Bureau
EIGHT junior tennis players left the country for Nairobi, Kenya, on Sunday to compete in the African Junior Championships starting today.
The tournament is scheduled to end on March 22 and Zimbabwe will be represented by Tadiwa Chinamo and Julius Mutetwa in the boys Under-16 while Rufaro Chirewa and Karen Machisa will fight for honours in the girls section.
Tanaka Chabata and Dennis Moses will take part in the boys’ Under-14 and the pair of Kimberly Bhunu and Beverly Matsiwe will participate in the girls category.

The eight players qualified for the championships in January when they finished among the top players during the Zonal tournament held in Botswana which was acting as the qualifier for the finals.

Tennis Zimbabwe administrator, Cliff Nhokwara, said they were hoping the players will do well after failing to impress last year.
“Last year we went to Kenya but it wasn’t very good. Most of our players were playing there for the first time.
“Now that they have some experience, they all qualified during the zonals and we should have a couple of surprises,” said Nhokwara.

The team was accompanied by coach Miracle Matanga.
Nhokwara said they were now engaging sponsors for the Futures events to come up with the dates for the tournament after the International Tennis Federation recently announced the dates for the Davis Cup Africa Zone Group III qualifiers.

The tournament is set to start on September 8 in Egypt with 12 countries competing.
The national association had to wait so that the dates would not clash.

“We can have the tournaments either in June or October after the Davis Cup. It’s something we are still to conclude with our sponsors.
“We can’t have them in August because we have the 18-and-Under for three weeks.

“Initially, we thought Davis Cup will be in June and now that it’s in September it will not be possible to use the futures as warm up events,” said Nhokwara.
Zimbabwe is hoping to host two futures events this year to be sponsored by Twenty Third Century Systems and NetOne.