Tennis

A pioneering event on the tennis scene in Namibia, the “KIA Pro-Tennis Academy (PTA) Tennis Series” will be launched in February.

The series will consist of nine tournaments, with the first one due to start on February 18 at SKW and other venues in Windhoek. The series is meant to showcase Namibia’s most skilled players of all ages and skill levels.

Competitors will face each other in different categories based on skill, disregarding gender and age, and will be able to earn points at each tournament to advance in the overall KIA PTA Ranking of the series.

Namibian tennis player Tuki Jacobs recently returned home from competing in four ITF Grade 1 Junior tournaments in South America.

The first tournament was in Mexico where he played in the Alberto Juvenil Mexicano tournament and lost in the first round. Ricky Menedilla from Mexico beat him 6-2, 6-1.

In the next tournament at the Copa del Café in Costa Rica, Jacobs did not manage to qualify to play after he lost in the third and final round of the qualifiers.

The Namibian Tennis Association (NTA) played host to 104 of Southern Africa’s best junior tennis players at the recent ITF/CAT Southern Africa Junior Championships.

Bob Mould, President of the NTA, said: “We are proud to host this important tournament which brings together the best young tennis players from 11 different countries.”

Players from Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe participated in the week-long competition.

Namibia’s Sedi Jacobs found the going hard in the U16 girls final when she lost to top seeded Theresa van Zyl of South Africa at the ITF Southern African Junior Tennis Championships on Saturday at the National Tennis Stadium in WIndhoek.

14-year-old Jacobs lost the match 6-2, 6-0 in a quick final that was dominated by the older Van Zyl.

“Today I was not playing at my best and my concentration was off for some reason,” Jacobs said after the match.

“Theresa played some very good shots and the fact that she was at her best also contributed to the win for her,” she added.

Namibia’s Sedi Jacobs staged a great comeback to beat Janet Koch of South Africa in the semifinals of the ITF Southern African Junior Tennis Championships on Friday.

Koch seemed set for a comfortable victory when she easily won the first set 6-1. But Jacobs refocused and fought for each point to win the second set 6-4.

The final set saw some fine rallies as both players gave it their all but Jacobs eventually won a titanic set 7-5 to win the match.

It was a great achievement by Jacobs who is still only 14 years old. She displayed a high level of maturity to turn the match around.

Sedi Jacobs is the only remaining Namibian player left in the singles competition of the ITF Southern African Junior tennis tournament currently taking place in Windhoek, after completion of the quarterfinal matches on Thursday.

Playing in the quarterfinals of the Girls U16 category, Jacobs put in a great performance to beat Nthabiseng Mogopodi of Botswana 6-1, 6-3. Jacobs was a bit inconsistent at times but on the whole her groundstrokes and serve were too powerful for her Botswana opponent, as she comfortably reached the semifinals.

The International Tennis Federation’s Southern African Junior Tennis Championships for Under 12, Under 14 and Under 16 players started in Windhoek on Sunday and will continue through to Saturday, January 14 when the finals will be held.

Players from eleven countries are participating in the tournament which will see some of southern Africa’s top junior players in action.

The opening matches will take place on a round robin basis to determine the seedings in the various age groups. From Wednesday onwards the tournament will move over to a knockout phase.

Louis Botha and Lynique Theron won the NTA Masters singles titles after beating Michau Basson and Melissa Gillies respectively in Windhoek on Sunday.

Theron easily won the women’s title by beating Gillies 6-1, 6-1, while Botha had to work a bit harder before beating Basson 6-3, 6-2 in the men’s final.

Both players won cash prizes of N$5 000 sponsored by Customs Clearance Logistics, and a weekend for two sponsored by Desert Homestead and Horse Trails.

The Namibia Tennis Association Masters tournament got underway on Friday with some outstanding matches which included some upsets.
 
In the men’s competition Michau Basson won in two excellent sets against the big serving Henco Serdyn, while Deon van Dyk beat Grant Rau who was the top seeded player in their group.
 
In the women’s competition, Linique Theron has not lost a single game and looks like the clear favorite to win the women’s title.
 
The women’s final will start at 08h00 on Sunday, to be followed directly afterwards by the men’s final.

One of the top tournaments on the local tennis calendar, the NTA Masters, will be held at the national tennis courts in Olympia this weekend.

The tournament, which is being sponsored by Customs Clearance Specialists Logistics and Desert Homestead & Horse trials, will see the top 12 senior men and the top 8 senior women in Namibia in action.

The women will play on a round robin basis in two groups of four each, with the top two going through to the semifinals.