New Winners preps on track

tournament is scheduled to run from January 2 to 5 at Harare Sports Club with more than 100 junior players expected to fight for the top honours in the Under-12, 14, 16 and 18 age-groups.
The annual tournament, which caters mostly for local players, will run simultaneously with the Super Eight competition which will see the top eight players in each age-group playing in a separate event.
Registration is already underway and the national association have set tomorrow as the closing date for entries.
TZ manager Cliff Nhokwara said the idea behind the staging of this event is to give other players, who would not have won any tournament, an opportunity to raise their level of play.
“We are closing entries on December 28 and will conduct the draw on Friday. We are having another event for the top eight players for each age-group.
“The principle of the New Winners tournament is to give an opportunity to those players, who would not have won anything, to play at this level, so previously the top 10 players would not play in the New Winners.
“But because of the problem we had when the numbers, in terms of participants, went down, we had resorted to involving everyone because parents could not afford to sponsor tennis due to the harsh economic climate.
“Now that the numbers have picked up, we are going back to the old system and the top eight will have their own competition but the two events will run at the same time,” said Nhokwara.
The TZ official also said the idea behind the tournament is to promote local players although it is open to foreigners.
“This is for locals, we have had interest from private academies from South Africa but mostly this is for local players.
“The participation of foreigners depends on their ability to come because usually junior tournaments are localised unless they are International Tennis Federation events.
“You will find that when we have these tournaments other countries will also be running their own events.
“There are no ITF points but it does have ranking points for local purposes. We are expecting 150 players because we have a draw of 64 players who will compete in the Super Eight and then those that will play in the New Winners,” said Nhokwara.
The TZ administrator said the Super Eight competition will present an opportunity to local players to prepare for the Zonals set for Namibia.
The Super Eight could be used by the players as a warm-up event for the Zonals to be held in Namibia from January 8 to 14.
Zimbabwe is set to send 11 players for the Namibian event, which is targeting the Under-12, 14 and 16 players.