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Ellina Mhlanga Sports Reporter
PLAYER-coach Martin Dzuwa has urged local tennis authorites to invest in junior players if Zimbabweans are to make an impact in international tournaments. Dzuwa was speaking after a disappointing show by local players at the just ended ITF South Central African Circuit at Harare Sports Club.

The two-week long event attracted players from various parts of the world and local players were exposed once again as most of them struggled to get past the first round with only Courtney Lock and Nicole Dzenga managing to win the doubles title in the boys and girls categories.

Lock also reached the singles semi-finals in the first leg while Dzenga pulled through to the finals in the second leg.
Veteran player Dzuwa who is also an emerging coach said there is need for everyone including Tennis Zimbabwe, coaches and parents to work together to ensure that the juniors compete in more events to improve their level of play.

“For me it’s good to see these kids playing especially the local ones. Our level is not that bad but it’s just that kids from Europe and Asia play more frequently. For example after this tournament some went to Mauritius of which from our players nobody entered for that tournament which is open to everyone and after that there is Namibia.

“For us you find that after this our kids wait for the same tournament next year.
“As a coach you find that the first week of the tournament we had problems and then the second week our players had improved because they kept on practising during the tournament and you can imagine if they play a lot of these tournaments and are given the support they need they can improve.

“We are expecting too much from them whilst we are not putting as much to help them. Nicole got to the finals although she had had a bad week in the first week and now she is going back to South Africa and from there she is going to Namibia,” said Dzuwa.

Dzuwa said everything comes down to financial constraints as the national association does not have funds to support the young players leaving the burden to parents  and the current scenario has seen most players failing to attend more international events.

“If we don’t have funding for junior development whereby we go into schools and have provincial squads then we have a problem because if we are not going into schools and nothing is happening at junior level it’s going to be difficult because the numbers are important. The moment we have the numbers the more we can create competition for our local players,” Dzuwa said.

Bulawayo coach, Tendai Sibanda said there is need to create a conducive environment that will allow the young players to have more time for training.

“Basically what happens in tennis you have got to work a little bit harder, you need at least more than six hours a day to compete with the (foreign) players that are coming here to play because a lot of them do put in around six to seven hours of play every single day, Monday to Friday and they will break maybe Saturday and Sunday.

“For our boys we approach tennis more on an amateurish type of way where the boys will play three hours, sometimes you are lucky if you play one and half hours a day worse in winter where we have a shorter day and then longer nights that makes it even more difficult because the kids leave school at 4pm try to get to training at 5pm and you have got one and half hours left of playing of daylight, so it’s a bit difficult to get them to be at this level.

“Next year we are hoping to improve on that, I am starting a programme in Bulawayo where all the kids that are at secondary (school) and are playing tennis we will remove them from formal schooling and put them into a programme almost similar to the ones that are being run everywhere else. Hopefully by the time we get to this time of the year, next year we will have an idea of where we are and what we are able to produce,” said Sibanda.

Sibanda said coaches also need to work together instead of competing with each other for the benefit of the sport.
Last year Zimbabwe hosted the same tournament and most of the players found the going tough as they were booted out of the tournament in the early stages of the competition.