The Restart Of Tournaments With the tennis calendar so full these days it has been a pity that the one day events organized by Gauteng East Tennis Association have to take a back seat to the more major events. What with tournaments locally plus with South Africa competing in a number of team events within Africa, it was delightful to see the kids enjoying some tournament play last Sunday. As we have said these events are ideal for the level of play that our children are now. Sadly, with this being the first such event of the year, they have “fallen a bit behind” schedule as to where we had hoped they would be by now. However, it is very pleasing to note that we had multiple section winners in this round robin event. Huge congratulations go to Banele Xolo and Siyamthanda Silinga who are the young pair with little or no experience and they ended up winning their section. This is a huge leap for both players and in both we have hopes that being only 10 and 11, they will progress even further as time goes by. Wandile Tshabalala overcame the problem of losing his regular partner due to illness, so he was paired with a young girl and they too, won their section. A superb achievement seeing as the two had never even met before let alone played together. We were able to give new players both still very young, the opportunity of playing in a tournament and we were delighted that they won one of their matches in the round robin section to finish 5th. This one victory achieved by players with no experience at this level, is heart warming. Our two top girls Thando Xolo and Angel Nkosi were placed in the top section and found out just how much they to improve to make their mark at that level. However, the experienced they gained by playing against much stronger and more experienced players, will hold them in good stead later on. As in customary, all players were given medals at the end of the day so in fact all of them were winners. Once again we applaud the Association for providing tournaments which act as great encouragement for those players who are yet to reach the level whereby they can compete in the sanctioned tournaments staged by the national association. The only for them is up given these type of events. The two Madoda sister who played in their first tournament.
