02 Apr 2024

The ongoing World Tennis Tour Junior tournament that is being held in Botswana is said to have potential to boost the country’s economy.

Speaking on the sidelines of the tournament, Botswana Tennis Association (BTA) president Oaitse Thipe said the tournament was a benefit to the country’s sport tourism since the players, officials, coaches and their families had used the Botswana airlines to come to Gaborone, and were lodging in local hotels.

He said 90 players and their officials were in Botswana to compete in a tournament that started on Monday and would end on Saturday.

He said participating countries were from Southern African countries as well as India, the United States, and Europe, adding that all the players were in Botswana in quest to win points that can improve their world rankings.

Also Thipe said BTA had lined up other events of this magnitude in its calendar for this year.  

After this tournament, he said there would be other events in August and October in Gaborone.

He explained that while the current tournament was International Tennis Federation J30 World Tennis Tour Juniors, the subsequent ones would be of a higher level.

He said the J30 was also important given that it carried international points, which players accrued to get to the junior grand slam, junior French open and junior Wimbledon.

In August, he said they would be hosting J60 while in October they would host J100 adding that there were no doubt the tournaments would attract a lot of international players from around the world.

“This kind of tournament helps in generating revenue but as a country our objective is also to help our players gain points,” he said.

Thipe said they were also giving exposure to some of the local players that had no international level experience. ENDs