TENNIS
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THE growing presence of the Bathurst Tennis Centre on the junior circuit will take another step up when it hosts its annual March Junior Gold level tournament starting today and continuing through to Tuesday.
The Bathurst Tennis Centre has become one of the premier non-metropolitan venues for the sport in NSW in recent years and this level of tournament in the past has been taken out by players like Jelena Dokic and Todd Woodbridge.
An indicator of how strong the fields have been in recent years was given at this year’s Australian Open.
The boys singles was taken out by Nick Kyrgios, who in 2009 was runner-up in one of the singles age groups at Bathurst.
His conqueror that year, Jay Andrijic, was one half of the winning duo in the boys doubles at the 2013 Australian Open.
“Unless you go to a national level tournament held at Homebush or Melbourne Park, this is about as good as it gets,” tournament co-ordinator Andrew Mitton said.
“We’ve had really strong entries again this year, we have one player coming over from New Zealand and other players from Queensland, Victoria and the ACT. It looks like being one of the strongest fields we’ve ever had.”
Bathurst players have not enjoyed too many particularly notable results at these sorts of events in recent years, but there are at least a handful with good credentials going into the 2013 edition.
Three Bathurst players are seeded for their respective age groups.
Eglinton prodigy Grace Schumacher is among the top seeds in her division and would be confident of competing deep into the tournament while Alex and Gabby Mitton are also both seeded in their respective draws.
“We will have about six or seven players from Bathurst, I’d be expecting those three seeded players to do reasonably well while there are a few others there who are trying to get some experience at this level and hopefully get through one or two matches,” Andrew Mitton said.
“As these events grow, the aim is just to keep getting these elite players to compete out here as often as we can. The standard is very high and we want it to stay that way.”