Three Zimbabwean junior tennis players Tadiwa Chinamo, Julius Mutetwa and Keith Wakatama will today open their campaign at the African Junior Team Championships which gets underway in Algeria.
The tournament will be played in Algiers from June 11-17 on clay surface. The trio, which is being coached by Freeman Nyamunokora, will be aiming to secure the sole available slot for the World Junior Tennis finals set for Prostejov, Czech Republic, in August.
Chinamo, Mutetwa and Wakatama were selected to represent the country by virtue of being the top three players in the boys’ under-14 category in the country.
Besides being a qualification platform for the World Junior Tennis finals, the tournament in Algeria will also be an opportunity for young players to gain ranking points.
Chinamo is currently the highest-ranked of the trio on number 21 on the continental rankings with Wakatama further down the rankings on position 80 while Mutetwa is currently outside the top 100. Joining Zimbabwe at the week-long event are favourites South Africa, Egypt, Ghana, Malawi, Morocco, Burundi, Kenya, Mauritius, Tunisia and Madagascar.
According to the International Tennis Federation website, the participating teams will be drawn into four round-robin groups before the top teams in each group progress to the semi-finals where a knock-out competition decides the champions.
