PTF to introduce U10, U8 rankings

Rankings to be featured first time in Lobbing Love Tennis Tournament scheduled to be held in Islamabad

KARACHI: The Pakistan Tennis Federation (PTF) will introduce U10 and U8 national ranking systems as the first Lobbing Love Tennis Tournament at Dilawar Abbas Tennis Complex in Islamabad gets ready to kick off.

This is the first time a tournament is being organised for U10 players who will also have their separate rankings.

“This will be a milestone for us,” PTF Secretary Khalid Rehmani told The Express Tribune. “We began training players in academies in January last year. The aim is to find tennis players at a younger age and then we can groom them into better athletes after identifying the talent.”

He added: “We feel the ranking system will motivate youngsters to do better and it would be the same system that we use for regular men’s and women’s tournaments.”

Rehmani said that the series will begin from Islamabad while more tournaments will take place in Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar with the main goal of developing tennis at grassroots level.

“The International Tennis Federation (ITF) has four different kinds of modified balls; for younger U10 players we use tennis balls with less pressure so that it is received slowly and they manage to hit it right, while the regular tennis balls that are used for adults fly in faster,” explained Rehmani.

“The challenge will be to get junior players all over the country to use these balls while training too and the PTF has already made mandatory to hold U10 and U8 events in every national tournament with green dot 75% pressure balls,” he added.

Rehmani also thanked US’ Lobbing Love academy for helping PTF. “We received the balls and equipment from the Lobbing Love academy that is established in the US. Their official came to Pakistan last year and that helped us to even consider holding national U10 events and assign these players the rankings from now on,” said Rehmani.

The first event was scheduled to take place on January 4, however, due to rains in Islamabad, the tournament has been pushed forward two weeks.