Pakistan’s slide in junior tennis continues

KARACHI: Pakistan continues to slide in junior tennis. On Saturday, Pakistan achieved seventh position in the Junior Davis Cup (JDC) Asia/Oceania pre-qualifying round. Last year, Pakistan had secured fifth position.

In 2015, Pakistan stood second in the pre-qualifying round and qualified for the finals where they got seventh position.

In the recent JDC, after losing to Philippines 0-3 in the quarter-finals, Pakistan faced humiliating defeat at the hands of unseeded Jordan on Friday who defeated Pakistan 2-0.

In the first singles, Hamza Bin Rehan was beaten by Karam Hatamleh 6-7(6), 1-6. In the second singles, Muhammad Shoaib beat Zacharia Khasawneh 6-4, 6-1.

In the doubles, the pair of Hamza and Shoaib lost to Zacharia and Abedallah Shelbayh 4-6, 5-7.

Pakistan struggled against unseeded Bhutan in the last match on Saturday before winning it 2-1. In the first singles, Shoaib overpowered Tenzin Singye Dorji 2-6, 7-5, 6-2, but in the second singles Aqib Hayat lost to Tshering Tharchen 3-6, 1-6. In the doubles, Hamza and Shoaib defeated Tenzin Singye Dorji and Tshering Tharchen 6-4, 6-3.

The PTF has failed to establish a national academy at its tennis complex in Islamabad, which is a longstanding demand of junior players.

When this scribe contacted PTF secretary Khalid Rehmani, he did not receive the phone calls.

He told ‘The News’ in April 2016: “We have been working on this project for four to five months.” He added that they were in talks with former tennis players like Hameed-ul-Haq to head the academy.

But since then nothing has happened.

Hameed at that time told ‘The News’ that setting up a national academy was the need of the hour as it would save huge money of the players who were going to different countries for training. “Our players have to pay a lot of money for a few weeks’ training in countries like Thailand,” he said.

“An academy in Pakistan could provide the same training to the players at affordable fees, and it would help all the players in the country,” he said.

Mohammad Khalid, who represented Pakistan in Davis Cup for quite some time, lamented that there was no high-standard academy functioning in the country to train tennis players for international events.

“We don’t have a proper academy in the country, neither private, nor government,” he said.

He said the academies being run in the country were a kind of private tuitions that former players were giving to their students. “We need state-of-the-art academies to produce quality players. We are not making our presence felt even in Asia,” he added.