Sav­it­ree Singh will be back to de­fend her sin­gles ti­tles at the Metro Ho­tel Chetwynd End of Year Ten­nis Tour­na­ment, which gets go­ing at the end of this month at the club’s ten­nis court on St. Vin­cent Street, Tu­na­puna. 

How­ev­er, a new cham­pi­on would be crowned for the men’s sin­gles, as last year’s win­ner Seve Day will have oth­er com­mit­ments at that time. 

Day had the most amaz­ing de­but per­for­mance ever, hav­ing to re­turn from in­jury in a tour­na­ment that fea­tured a large, com­pet­i­tive field, which he com­pet­ed against and pre­vailed in suc­cess­ful­ly. In the fi­nal, Day de­feat­ed for­mer na­tion­al stand­out Nabeel Mo­hammed, both hav­ing to go to a tiebreak­er af­ter Day took an ear­ly ad­van­tage, but Mo­hammed knot­ted up the scores in the sec­ond set. 

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day Day, who was al­so abroad be­fore he re­turned for the tour­na­ment, said he will not be able to de­fend his ti­tle as he has a foot­ball tour­na­ment to play in at the Queen’s Park Oval at that time. “This is a tour­na­ment that I had been booked to play in a long time ago, so I will have to go back for the Chetwynd ti­tle next year,” Day said. 

He not­ed his tri­umph came as no easy feat as he was test­ed from the very first match of the com­pe­ti­tion, which all served to pro­vide much-need­ed prac­tice for me, who was com­ing back af­ter in­juries. 

In the women’s sin­gles last year, Singh got the bet­ter of vet­er­an play­er Sarah Sa­landy, who as an ad­min­is­tra­tor has found it dif­fi­cult to se­cure the ti­tle, such is the high lev­el of com­pe­ti­tion. 

Sa­landy said the sin­gles play-off, which will fea­ture ac­tion for open men’s and women’s, will now add an over 45 men’s di­vi­sion and an over 60 cat­e­go­ry. Singh could not be reached yes­ter­day, but or­gan­is­ers are cer­tain she will be there to de­fend her crown, with reg­is­tra­tion al­so open and tak­ing place. 

Sa­landy said this year’s tour­na­ment will get go­ing with the dou­bles play-off (men’s dou­bles, women’s dou­bles, mixed dou­bles, and over 45 men’s dou­bles). 

Mo­hammed, de­spite los­ing the men’s sin­gles ti­tle, did not leave the tour­na­ment emp­ty-hand­ed, as he joined forces with Kristyan Valen­tine to cop the men’s dou­bles at the ex­pense of the pair of Richard Chung and Beck­ham Sylvester in the fi­nal.