By Tym Glaser, Associate Editor - SportTHE MORIBUND local amateur tennis scene is set to receive a long overdue boost with the implementation of a special ranking system which will ultimately see six players fly off to Florida to attend a major ATP tournament.
The brainchild of Liguanea Club professional Llockett McGregor, the appropriately named Llockett McGregor Tennis Series will comprise four tournaments from which the top points winners from men's Classes 1, 2, 3 and 4 and Ladies' sections B and C will be flown to Key Biscayne for next year's NASDAQ tennis tournament.
The four Series events are the Llockett McGregor Tennis Classic, which starts on Saturday, the Mercedes Benz Amateur tennis tournament (October 30-November 6), the King Alarm/LP Azar tournament (November 13-20) and the Trafalgar Travel Amateur
tournament (May 5-12, 2005).
100 POINTS
The winner of each section of a tournament will receive 100 points, the runner-up 75, the losing semi-finalists 44, losing quarter-finalists 25 and round of 16 losers 15. The points will be tallied and published after each event in the Trafalgar Travel Standings. The standings leaders after the final event will be the grand prize winners.
"I noticed a drop off in recent amateur tennis tournaments and thought this would be a good way to get more interest back into the game," McGregor said yesterday from the Liguanea Club, which will host the events.
"I approached Conrad Graham (managing director) of Trafalgar Travel with the idea and he was more than willing to help out," McGregor said.
"Hopefully, something like this can lead to the return of team tennis and things like that to get more interest back into the game," he said. "We need to make the amateur tennis scene vibrant again."
McGregor said the organisers knew the ability of most of the island's amateurs so there was little danger of players entering sections below their skill level.
"If we see someone in, say, Class 4 dominating we will move them up," he said.
The Classic serves off on Saturday and McGregor said already almost 100 entries had been received.
"I expect quite a few more when word of the Series starts to get around," he said.
The deadline for entries into the Classic is before 6:00 this evening.
Apart from Series points, there will be other prizes on offer at the Classic including weekends away sponsored by Swept Away, Hedonism II, Sandals, Super Clubs, FDR Resort and Cave Ridge.
