2nd March, 2015
Damilare Okunola
The Lagos Country Club, yesterday, came alive with the invitational Clay Championship organised by the club to prepare Nigerian players for this month’s African Junior Tennis Championship, AJTC.
P.M.NEWS Tennis Special gathered that five of Nigeria’s eight players to the forthcoming ITF Championship billed for Tunisia will be perfecting strategies towards a successful outing.
The tournament in Tunis which will feature about 30 countries across Africa is a clay court event, hence the bias for staging the Country Club tournament on clay court.
The five players are Martins Abamu, Micheal Oshewa, Michael Ayoola, Angel McCleod and Oyinlomo Quadri.
Their other three remaining colleagues namely Godsgift Timipre, Adetayo Adetunji and Blessing Patrick are training in different parts of the country.
All the boys were in action yesterday for the Boys 12 and 16 categories.
The Group A of the U16, Abamu and Ayoola are joined by Ayomide Jebutu and Kazeem Fadipo while in Group B David Amusu, Ayobami Ajayi and Kareem Junior will all slug it out with Oshewa in a round-robin format.
In the Boys U-12 Wilson Igbinovia, Victor Nworgu, Ayomide Collins and David Ikpeme will face one another in a round robin series while in Group B, Daniel Okon, Michael Abamu, Yakubu Dwattu and Libus Kadeh will vie for the qualification ticket.
Other promising junior players like Serena Teluwo, Lolade Holmes, Reya Holmes, Ayo Gabriel and Filippo Trombi are also featuring in the event organized by MP Tennis to enable Nigerian players familiarize with championships due to dearth of competitions for the country’s emerging talents.
National junior tennis coach, Mohammed Ubale, our correspondent also gathered, will be on hand during the latter stage of the tournament to make assessment of the player’s performance before the trip to the North African country this weekend.