Indika and Nilupul a double each

by Dinesh Weerawansa

Indika Wettasinghe of Royal College and Nilupul Goonasekera of Musaeus College completed a double each at the first ever Asian U/14s series concluded at the National Tennis Centre courts in Colombo over the weekend.

The week-long event is a combined initiative of the ATF and Australian Open aimed at developing junior Asian tennis. It also heralds the first- ever ATF ranking system for Under 14s in Asia, which means Wettasinghe and Goonasekera, both of who collected 300 ATF points each, occupy the no. 1 rank for boys and girls respectively for the time being, at least.

The concluded Colombo event kicks off a 12-tournament series to be held in a dozen different Asian cities over the coming nine months.

The top four boys and girls at series end will be entitled to play in the Australian junior circuit and then climax their tour memorably by viewing at close range the Australian Open next February.

It is still early days to say if any of our players will qualify to play in the Australian junior circuit to succeed they'll have to collect more points at other tournaments where the competition is likely to be tougher.

But its nice to think that at least for now two of our players are at the top of the ATF rankings, President of the SLTA Suresh Subramaniam, who was also chief guest of the event, said. The series itself offers our juniors more opportunities to add to their experience in that respect the series is a boon, he added.

All of the series tournaments are open to any under 14 competitors from Asia. The Colombo event, however, attracted only two overseas participants, both Malaysians in the boys' events.

Despite the lack of foreign players, the weeklong event provided some exciting competition. In the Girls Singles, bottom seed Goonasekera surprised the top seed, Jithmi Jayawickrema of Visakaha, 6/3, 7/5. But Wettasinghe lived up to his top billing by overcoming Lyceum Internationals Guyanga Weerasekera, the seventh seed, 3/6,6/1,6/1.