KARACHI: The Development Officer of the International Tennis Federation (ITF) for West & Central Asia Amir Borghei arrived in Pakistan on Wednesday morning.
This official visit of Borghei is aimed to enhance the level of interaction between the ITF, the Asian Tennis Federation (ATF) and the PTF with regard to efforts by the PTF to organise more international events to the country.
A spokesman of PTF said in a statement that after successfully bringing international tennis back to Pakistan, the PTF President Salim Saifullah Khan spearheaded the efforts to host maximum number of ITF and ATF events in the country.
During his tour, Borghei would meet PTF management officials to go over variant aspects, including, player development plans and programmes between now and 2020, coaching and officiating matters, progress in the ITF-led Junior Tennis Initiative (JTI), said the PTF spokesman.
There would be discussions on conversion of an additional five gravel-clay courts at the PTF Complex, for which the ITF has provided a special grant of $50,000.
It is the first time that the ITF has provided such funding for infrastructural development which depicts its confidence in the PTF, stated the PTF spokesman.
With the return of international tennis tournaments in early 2017 and an increasing number of such tournaments in future, the spokesman added, it has become necessary to provide the players facilities of international standard.
According to PTF statement, Khwaja Saeed Hai, president of the Sindh Tennis Association (STA), said Islamabad clay courts were not exactly real clay courts and play fast. “Synthetic surface tennis courts with rubberised base have been developed so that the leg muscles are not damaged and thousands of courts of synthetic material have been built in the world,” he said.
“The synthetic courts have no bad bounce and are an ideal surface to play tennis. I strongly recommend synthetic courts,” said Hai.
The statement also quoted chairman of Punjab Lawn Tennis Association (PLTA) Iftikhar Rao as supporting the decision to convert the courts. “I believe that for Pakistani players to be competitive in the international arena, our youngsters must be trained on the surfaces where almost 80 percent of events are played,” he said.
Rao added that it was disappointing to see Pakistan had failed to keep pace with international developments. He said Pakistan hockey suffered a lot because the country was 10 years behind the rest of the world in using astro-turf.
“We, in Punjab, converted most of our training and events-holding centres to synthetic courts several years ago,” said Rao.
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