By Sumit LAL
The weekend of the 5 – 6 September 2020 saw one of the first social tennis competitions that has been held in Fiji since the outbreak of the Coronavirus pandemic in March this year. Over the two days, the Suva Tennis Committee hosted a doubles tournament with the hopes of bringing as many players together for a fun and active tennis weekend.
Forty-four people participated in the tournament, including players from the three clubs around Suva and a number who travelled from Nadi to compete. The weekend competition was designed to foster healthy and fun social competition and included both national team players, as well as junior and social players. In order to ensure that everyone had fun while playing, the national players were randomly partnered with one junior or social player. This aimed to ensure that no team was too dominate and to foster learning and skill sharing between the different competitive playing abilities. The social competition had four pools with each team playing five matches on the Saturday, before going through to the knockout rounds on Sunday.
The winners of the social doubles competition were Junior Benjamin and Sina Izumi who defeated runners-up, Raynal Singh and Bulou. Both teams received small prizes to bring the weekend to a close.
Photos: Doubles winners Junior Benjamin and Sina Izumi (left) and runners-up Bulou and Raynal Singh.
The tournament was hosted by Pin Ma, Saroj Izumi and Sumit Lal and supported by the Suva Tennis Committee. Suva Tennis aims to make this social doubles tournament an annual event and hopes to attract a wider range of players from across Fiji next year.
Photos courtesy of Sumit Lal and Raynal Singh