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India among top six: ITF official

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI NOV. 25. High quality practice with high intensity, both by the players and the coaches, was emphasised as the main path to success by the Executive Director of the International Tennis Federation (ITF), Dave Miley, in a press conference here today.

Addressing the media in the Capital on way to Bangalore for the Coaches workshop, Dave Miley said that he was impressed with the growth of the game in the country. Having played the Satellite circuit here in the 1980s and having visited the country last in 1997 as an official, Dave Miley was able to appreciate the changes, in terms of the number of international tournaments played in the country, the number of players pursuing the game apart from the tennis education of the coaches and officials.

"India is one of the top six countries in the world for the high number of tournaments hosted in a year. The depth has improved, and there are more Indian players ranked than ever before'', said the ITF official.

He, however, said that there was no move to have an ITF regional training centre in Asia, on the lines of the ones in South Africa, Fiji and Spain, but clarified that there would be more camps in the region for the benefit of the players.

Pointing at the examples of Angelique Widjaja and Paradorn Srichaphan, Dave Miley asserted that the Asian players were capitalising on the ITF support better than anybody else.

"There are also a lot of Indian players in the ITF teams at various levels'', he said.

He also revealed that the ITF would be experimenting with a combined ranking for the juniors, with 75 per cent of points from singles and 25 per cent of points from doubles, apart from introducing the International Tennis Number (ITN) to grade the players at different levels on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being the best.

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