• Post category:All / Tennis

Pretoria, South Africa; To fall in line with the Tennis South Africa (TSA) vision of giving up and coming local junior tennis stars a chance of international tennis exposure, TSA announced that Gauteng would once again host back to back international junior tournaments this month.

Johannesburg and Pretoria will each stage an International Tennis Federation (ITF) Grade 4 tournament.

The first of the two 18 and under tournaments will start on Monday 18 July with the finals scheduled for Saturday 23 July and will be played at The Wanderers Tennis Club in Illovo, Joburg. The second will be played from 25-30 July at the Groenkloof Tennis Stadium in Pretoria.

Junior tennis players from 15 visiting countries are in South Africa to participate in these two tournaments.

“By hosting international junior tennis events in South Africa it gives our local juniors the opportunity of earning world ranking points in their own backyard” said President of Tennis South Africa, Gavin Crookes. “It is very costly for our juniors to travel around the world to work themselves onto and up the world rankings so now they can capitalize on playing affordably at home in weather conditions they are used to.”

Crookes continued by saying that it was pleasing once again to see so many local and international players coming to South Africa compete. “This shows that the internationals are happy with our facilities and are most likely to return in the future.”

There are players from Morocco, Zimbabwe, Greece, USA, Botswana, Tunisia, Kenya, France, Ethiopia, Lesotho, Burundi, Namibia, Italy, Nigeria and Israel competing in both events.

There will be a qualifying tournament for the ITF Wanderers Juniors on Saturday and Sunday 16th, 17th July. Sign in for this event will be at the Wanderers Sporting Club on Friday 15th July from 16:00 – 18:00.

The seeds for the ITF Wanderers Juniors are as follows;

Boys

  1. Richard Thongoana (RSA)
  2. Joshua Howard-Tripp (RSA)
  3. Bertus Kruger (RSA)
  4. Siphosothando Montsi (RSA)
  5. Mohamed Ali Bellalouna (TUN)
  6. Philip Henning (RSA)
  7. Yassir Kilani (MAR)
  8. Lance-Pierre Du Toit

Girls

  1. Lee Barnard (RSA)
  2. Zani Barnard (RSA)
  3. Maxine Bateman (RSA)
  4. Lilya Hadab (MAR)
  5. Mila Hartig (RSA)
  6. Megan Lombardi (RSA)
  7. Imaan Hassim (RSA)
  8. Minette Van Vreden (RSA)