Motor Centre Bounces Back To Sponsor Tennis
Kabelo Boranabi | Monday June 13, 2016 14:34
“We are happy to welcome them back after we had some constraints last year. We tied a knot with them and we would reveal the figures at the right time,” he said.
In 2014, Motor Centre sponsored the tournament to the tune of P160,000. The winners in the male and female singles pocketed P10,000 and P6,000 respectively.
This year’s tournament will start on July 16. Amanze also told the gathering that his committee is not pleased with the fact that yet again no single tennis players has qualified for this year’s Olympics. According to the International Tennis Federation (ITF) rules, a player is able to qualify for the Olympics if they are ranked in the top 200 in the world. The highest ranked local player, Phenyo Matong currently occupies the 1985th spot in the world. Amanze, who heads Confederation of African Tennis (CAT) development committee said they had suggested to the ITF that the continent have a qualifying tournament, but their request was not successful.
“The criteria is too steep for Africa. We suggested that the African Championships be used as a qualifying platform, where the winners would represent the continent, but the mother body declined as they want to maintain high standards of play at the tournament,” he said.
Other than Matong, the country have unranked Innocent Tidimane and Nthabiseng Mogopodi who are based in the United States of America under the Botswana National Sport Commission (BNSC) Elite sponsorship, while juniors Tsholofelo Tsiang, Tshepo Mosarwa and Loago Saleshando are based at the High Performance Centre (HPC) in South Africa.