The fifth annual Barbados Road Tennis Open has delivered a high standard of competition, according to association president Frederick Blunt, as the tournament prepares for its championship showdown at the Garfield Sobers Gymnasium on Saturday.
Blunt said the quality of play had been particularly encouraging despite some early setbacks during the tournament.
The tournament will culminate with two senior finals featuring familiar faces and a chance for defending champions to retain their titles.
In the men’s final, defending champion Shakeem Nurse will face three-time champion Mark Venom Griffith in a repeat of last year’s championship clash.
Nurse will be seeking to once again deny the experienced Griffith, who enters the final with three Open titles to his name.
The women’s final will see defending champion Sheldene Waldron take on Kim Holder as she bids to retain her crown.
“Well the quality is very good this year because the standard is very high. Obviously we had a few little hiccups at the beginning of the tournament but when we look at the standard of the tennis, it has been of a high quality,” Blunt confirmed.
His assessment came on Thursday during the official handover of three refurbished courts and new tennis equipment to students of George Lamming Primary School at Welches, St Michael, by the Bridgetown Lions Club.
He revealed that over the last five years, several more primary schools have become involved in the sport.
“As you know, the National Sports Council has its primary school tournament and that has been improving steadily. The Barbados Road Tennis Association will also be going around to a number of primary schools and assisting where we can, whether it’s painting courts or offering assistance to the principals and the key teachers about how they can improve their road tennis programmes,” he added.
Blunt said the National Sports Council has employed two more road tennis coaches, bringing the number to three. As a result, he said schools are now benefiting from more training. He also said there has been a concerted effort to attract younger players to the sport.
“We have paid a lot of attention to the youth component of road tennis because we realised that the majority of the players at the time when we came into office were over 40. Eighty-five per cent of the players were over 40, so we made a particular effort to focus on the young players, and that has been a tremendous success.
“Obviously, there can be a lot more improvement because we would like to see more coaches in the schools, and I don’t believe that three is enough. I think we should have at least five or six coaches,” stated Blunt, who believes that at least one of the coaches should be female.
(KH)
