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Ellina Mhlanga Harare Bureau
TENNIS Zimbabwe President Regis Bhunu says this year’s International Tennis Federation Futures events to be staged between June and July in Harare will be a good platform for the build-up to the Davis Cup tournament.

The national association will host three US$10 000 tournaments in Harare from June 20 to July 10.

The three consecutive events will be followed by the Davis Cup tie on the weekend of July 15 to 17 where Zimbabwe will be fighting to retain their spot in the Europe/Africa Group II. They will be away to Georgia.

Zimbabwe lost the first round tie to Finland and they now have to win against Georgia if they are to remain in Group II. A defeat will see them being relegated to the less fashionable Africa Zone Group III.

Bhunu said there is need for more players to take part in such tournaments to create a broad base for selection of the Davis Cup team.

“What we’re trying to do is to motivate our players outside the country to come for the tournaments. All our players in the United States we’re encouraging them to come. It’ll make it easy for the selectors to see their performance.

“What we want to do is to use the same tournament to select our final Davis Cup team. We’re just encouraging them to come. We want to see how they’re performing.

“We also want to encourage those that aren’t part of the Davis Cup team to come, so that the selectors can easily identify their capabilities.

“Nothing should be guaranteed, it should be depended on how the person is performing at that particular time,” said Bhunu.

Bhunu said they have engaged their traditional sponsors, Old Mutual for the events and they have agreed to support them. But noted that they are still negotiating on the sponsorship package.

“We’ve done a proposal to Old Mutual and we’re still working on it but they’ve accepted,” Bhunu said.

Meanwhile Zimbabwe are hosting the ITF/CAT Regional 12/14 and under training camp and tournament in Bulawayo.

The training camp started yesterday at Bulawayo Country Club and will run until Sunday. It will culminate into a tournament set for next Monday to Thursday.

TZ administrator, Cliff Nhokwara said they are hoping to improve the standard of play for local players.

“We used to host the event and we stopped but we’ve decided to bring it back because the Under-12 and Under-14 are our backbone of tennis,” said Nhokwara.

The training camp is being conducted by Ryan Kruger from South Africa and Freeman Nyamunokora with participants from countries such as South Africa and Madagascar expected to take part.

Zimbabwe has 32 players participating.