Pres­i­dent of the Ten­nis As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T, Hay­den Mitchell, is con­fi­dent this year's "Sum­mer of Ten­nis" tour­na­ment will ben­e­fit lo­cal play­ers, who will get the chance to play pro­fes­sion­al­ly, at home.

The sec­ond edi­tion of the "Sum­mer of Ten­nis" will be held at the Na­tion­al Rac­quet Cen­tre in Tacarigua and will serve off on Ju­ly 12 with the first tour­na­ment, SR4 Un­der-12 De­vel­op­ment Team Cham­pi­onships. It will cli­max with the ITF U-18 MT 100 Car­ni­val Cup from Au­gust 14-31.

Speak­ing at the launch of the near­ly two-month-long ten­nis event yes­ter­day, Mitchell said T&T play­ers will square against their glob­al coun­ter­parts.

"One of the things we are ex­cit­ed about is to bring ex­po­sure to our young ath­letes and make sure that some­body who is born in T&T should be able to be­come a pro­fes­sion­al with­out leav­ing the shores of T&T," he said.

Mitchell, who is al­so a Di­rec­tor on the Board of the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T, al­so added that stag­ing the se­ries of tour­na­ments is to help pro­mote this coun­try as the cen­tre for the re­gion.

"We host­ed it last year and part of our vi­sion is to have T&T be­come the hub for re­gion­al ten­nis. We want to be able to host in­ter­na­tion­al tour­na­ments at all lev­els. We al­so want to be able to have de­vel­op­ment hap­pen­ing in the coun­try as well."

The Davis Cup Group IV tour­na­ment will fol­low the SR4 12 com­pe­ti­tion from Ju­ly 20-27. The top men's play­ers were se­lect­ed from tri­als last month. Aal­i­jah Leslie, Tim Pasea, Kale Dal­la Cos­ta, Kam­ran McIn­tosh-Ross and Sham­si will fly the red, white and black. The lo­cal men against will be aim­ing to fin­ish in the top two and be pro­mot­ed to Group Three.

T&T will host the Bil­lie Jean King Cup for the first time from Au­gust 3-10. The event is con­sid­ered the ladies' equiv­a­lent to the Davis Cup for men.

Ten­nis of­fi­cial Jer­mile Danclar said the lo­cal ten­nis com­mu­ni­ty is ho­n­oured to host the pre­mier Ladies Team com­pe­ti­tion.

"This is the first year that we bid and won the bid to host the event. So we are very proud of about that. Ten teams are sched­uled to par­tic­i­pate in the event this year- An­tigua Bar­bu­da, Aru­ba, Ba­hamas, Bar­ba­dos, Bermu­da, Cos­ta Ri­ca, El Sal­vador Ja­maica, St Lu­cia and hosts T&T."

The lo­cal ladies for the Bil­ly Jean King Cup tour­ney are Yolande Lea­cock, Aal­isha Alex­is, Jor­dane Dook­ie, and Char­lotte Ready.

Di­rec­tor of Phys­i­cal Ed­u­ca­tion and Sport at the Min­istry of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Gabre Mc­tair said the min­istry is back­ing the Sum­mer of Ten­nis ini­tia­tive.

"This Sum­mer of Ten­nis, the min­istry most def­i­nite­ly en­dors­es. I think that this au­gurs ex­treme­ly well for the de­vel­op­ment of ten­nis in T&T," said Mc­tair.

He added, "We look for­ward to hav­ing these types of tour­na­ments to pro­vide the In­ter­na­tion­al Ten­nis Fed­er­a­tion with the nec­es­sary im­pe­tus to grant the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of this fa­cil­i­ty as a re­gion­al De­vel­op­ment Cen­tre. The Sum­mer of Ten­nis pro­gramme does speak to a num­ber of the ob­jec­tives and themes of the Min­istry of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment's Na­tion­al Sport pol­i­cy 2017 to 2027."

Sched­ule for the Sum­mer of Ten­nis

Venue-Na­tion­al Rac­quet Cen­tre, Tacarigua

Ju­ly 12-19

SR4 Un­der 12 De­vel­op­ment Team Cham­pi­onships

Ju­ly 20-27

David Cup Group IV

Au­gust 3-10

Bil­ly Jean King Cup

Au­gust 10-15

COTECC-U-12, U-14 Sum­mer Bowle

Au­gust 17-24

ITF Un­der 18 MT100 Sum­mer Bowl

Au­gust 24-31

ITF U-18, M 100 Car­ni­val Cup