TFC names officials to head Futures events

via CAAI

Thursday, 13 January 2011 15:00 H S Manjunath

The Tennis Federation of Cambodia has named India’s ITF silver badge referee Puneet Gupta as the tournament supervisor for their upcoming back-to-back Men’s US$15,000 Futures events, to be held at the National Training Centre in Phnom Penh from January 24 to February 5.

Second in command for the tournaments will be bronze chair umpire from Uzbekistan Alexander Bagdasarov in a team of five officials that includes white badge holders Supreeth Kadavigere (India), Riyat Andrizar-Sagma (Indonesia) and Razmee Rawi (Malaysia).

TFC Technical Director and national team head coach Braen Aneiros told The Post yesterday that the services of two chair umpires from Thailand, eight Cambodian line judges and six local ball boys would also be employed for the Kingdom’s international debut at hosting ITF events.

Aneiros added that all the three courts at the NTC would be used for both singles and doubles events, while the two courts at the neighbouring Cambodian Country Club would be set aside for practice.

“There is a possibility that we could shift some of the late matches here and there depending on the situations arising out of unforeseen interruptions,” said Aneiros.

A quality field is expected to line up for the two tourneys which were upgraded to $15,000 prize-money status from an initial package of three $10,000 contests after Vietnam and Thailand backed out of their commitments to staging the third leg.

India’s Vishnu Vardhan, who holds a world ranking of 382, is expected to head an impressive list of foreign entries with top Cambodian national players Bun Kenny and Tan Nysan certain to get in as wild cards.

The sign-in for the first event’s qualifiers has been extended till 6pm on January 22. The qualifying round starts on January 24 with a card of 16 matches, and the eight qualifiers for the 32-player main draw will be identified the following day.

The main draw singles and doubles matches start on January 25, with the final scheduled for January 30.

For the second event, the qualifying round begins on January 29, with the first round of the main draw set for January 31. The event concludes on February 5 with singles and doubles finals.