Tennis M’sia step up challenge in 2020

KUALA LUMPUR: The Lawn Tennis Association of Malaysia (Tennis Malaysia) has scheduled a minimum of 27 high-intensity tournaments throughout the year, with the hope of beefing up the level of Malaysian tennis.

Even though the number of tournaments is almost the same as last year, its vice president, Datuk Sallahuddin Ahmad Kamal said the competitiveness and intensity level would be higher with the participation of more foreign and higher ranked players at both senior and junior levels this year to challenge locals.

Among the prominent tournaments slated are the Junior Fed Cup final qualifiers from March 30 to April 4 and Junior Davis Cup from April 510, both in Kuching and Group II (Asia/Oceania) qualifiers for the Fed Cup from June 8-14 at the National Tennis Centre, here, besides seven under-18 International Tennis Federation (ITF) tournaments.

“Apart from that, our president Mirzan Mahathir has recently visited Indonesia to seal a new effort between Tennis Malaysia and Indonesian Tennis Association (PELTI) to play four tournaments in each country as sending players for overseas training will costs us a lot, so this new effort will give more high level matches for our players. We do not want to be jaguh kampung by playing among ourselves, we need to compete against better players to improve and Indonesia has a lot of potential players to help us grow,” he said in a press conference at the launch of the national circuit and junior tour.

The Indonesians would be good sparring partners for Malaysian players, especially in the women’s department as Indonesia had won the women’s singles, doubles and mixed doubles gold medals at the 2019 Philippines SEA Games from the five gold medals contested, while Malaysia returned without a podium finish.

The four-leg national circuit will get the ball rolling with first leg at the National Tennis Centre from Feb 19-23, followed by second leg in Johor Bahru (June) and the KL Open (Sept) and Raintree Open (Oct) will be part of the circuit before concluding with the Masters event in December.

Meanwhile, the junior tour consists six legs, in 22 categories with both boys and girls singles and doubles, as well as an additional under9 category following an ITF ruling.

“This is a new category introduced this year…It is a programme from ITF and we will use orange ball, which is softer to help the kids get used to the game before playing with real tennis ball,” Sallahuddin added. — Bernama