development linked to Davis Cup
TENNIS: Jon Swift
IMPORTANT though next month’s Davis Cup tie against Austria on grass at the Wanderers undoubtedly is to the immediate future of tennis in this country, it is interesting to note that the glitz and glamour are not the only points of focus for the game’s new
“Tennis really happens in the provinces,” admits the game’s recently-appointed supremo Terry Rosenberg. “It’s where the clubs are, where the players are and where the youngsters come from.”
Rosenberg and his management team, along with sponsors MTN, are using the run-in to the Austrian head-to-head to foster the game at the development level.
It is a clever piece of timing, bolstered by the fact that the South African Davis Cup team will be hosting the clinics in Johannesburg and Pretoria, and that interest in a sport which Rosenberg rightly typifies as having “been in the gutter” will be at a peak.
It is also refreshing that Rosenberg cuts through the niceties of corporatespeak and says what has to be said with the minimum of
Tennis in this country had all but died before — if you will pardon the phrase — the new dispensation came along.
But clearly, major events aside, there is still much to be done. Development is essential in this respect, for it can hardly be debated that the game of tennis requires a good deal of effort — not to mention equipment and coaching — before the individual has even a half-chance of making a
In this regard, Geoff Coetzee will be one of four top juniors — the others are Damian Roberts, Surina de Beer and Giselle Swart — who will involve themselves in the clinics.
Coetzee comes from a background of a dorpie in the far reaches of the northern Cape where there was no hint of advantage, starting his budding career with a racquet carved from a wooden plank.
It is from such beginnings that the enduring and one would hope successful players will doubtless come as much as from the genteel
In using the Davis Cup tie as a development springboard, tennis has also exhibited a lateral thinking which has not been evident for a while. This is also evidenced in the preparations for the match against Austria, starting with the decision to play on the quick grass surface.
The venue will have a limit of around 3 400 spectators during the three days of February 9-11 and the tie is scheduled for promoting – — as tournament director Keith Brebnor enthusiastically puts it — a “Wimbledon
Tickets have also been reasonably priced if one draws a line between the cost of watching a one-day cricket international and viewing some of the world’s top players in action, at between R10 and R50 per day and R90 and R120 for a series ticket valid over all three days.
In all, all that now remains is for the lines to be painted on the greensward. It is a prospect that all South Africans — not least those who are to benefit from the clinics — await.