16th Governor’s Cup Tennis Gets Underway In Lagos

TAIWO ADELU

Hostilities begin at the 16th Governor’s Cup Lagos Tennis Championship with the players battle in the first round of the Main Draws of Futures 5 of the tournament in both the singles and doubles events of men and women’s categories. 

Players whose points could not make it to the Main Draws played their qualifying matches on Saturday and Sunday at the Lagos Lawn Tennis Club, Onikan at the end of which winners now join other players in the round of 32 in the Main Draws which begin on Monday.

Some Nigerians qualified and they will be joining eight others who were given Wildcards by the International Tennis Federation, ITF to play in the Main Draws. These set of players who made their through the qualifiers include Henry Atseye, Nonso Madueke, Aanu Ayegbusi, Osariemen Airhunmwunde, Edward Christopher Anefu and Ikechukwu Iloputa.

The players, who came from 39 countries of the world, will be fighting for ranking points and 50, 000 dollars prize money in the men and women’s events. The finals of the first leg will hold on Saturday, 15 October.

Enrique Lopez – Perez from Spain is the top seed in the men’s category, while Valetini Grammatikopoulou from Greece is the number one seed in the women’s event.

Men’s event has the likes of Nigeria’s Christian Paul, Umaru Balami, Moses Michael, Sylvester Emmanuel who all make the Main Draws.

Others are Boy Westerhof from The Netherlands, France’s Calvin Hemerdon and Karim-Mohamed Maamoun from Egypt.