Top Tennis players on show in Colombo

Non playing captain of Sri Lanka’s Davis Cup team Rohan De Silva, singles player Sanka Atukorale, reserve player Dinusha Balasuriya and Michael Siyaguwa will headline the men’s open event at the 92nd Colombo Championships Tennis tournament. This tournament gets underway at the Sri Lanka Tennis Association (SLTA) tomorrow The Colombo Championships is a “A” Grade tournament in the SLTA calendar and is conducted by the Playing section of the SLTA. The tournament would be conducted on six clay courts.

The events for the tournament would cover junior, open and senior events. Each participant would be restricted to two singles and a double.

Junior events include Boys under 10 singles, Girls under 10 singles, Boys Under 12 singles, Girls under 12 singles, Boys Under 14 singles, Boys under 14 doubles, Girls under 14 singles, Girls under 14 doubles, Boys under 16 singles, Girls under 16 singles, Boys under 18 singles, Boys under 18 doubles, Girls under 18 singles and Girls under 18 doubles

The open events consist of the Men’s singles, Men’s doubles Women’s singles, Women’s doubles and Mixed doubles

The Senior events are Over 35 singles, Over 35 doubles, over 45 singles, over 45 doubles, over 55 singles, over 55 doubles, over 65 singles and over 65 doubles.

The tournament director is Pavan Nadaraja and he will be assisted SLTA officials Avantha Suranimala and Kapila Amarasinghe
The entries were closed on 10th October 2007 and a total of 360 participants are taking part on the tournament with nearly 1000 entries from different events. The tournament committee plans to start with the junior events and to extend in the second week to have the open and senior events. The committee hopes to have the match schedules posted in the SLTA website for the convenience of the participants this year. Being the largest tournament next to the Nationals in the country the tournament committee expects all the leading players in the country to take part in this event.

The organizers said they were delighted to have for the second successive year Lenovo as the principal sponsor with ABC insurance and Horizon Property Developers (Pvt) Ltd. as co sponsors for this event. The tournament committee also expects that fair weather will prevail in the next few weeks and with all the leading players taking part to have good tennis during the tournament.
(HJ)