Tournament Director of the South West Open Tennis tournament Justin Atkins, has reiterated his appeal for more support from corporate Barbados to ensure the event’s continued expansion and development.
He made the appeal following Sunday’s conclusion of the third staging of the tournament.
“Well in terms of the future, I think it would benefit the event if corporate Barbados gets behind us even more, so we can push for better tournaments in the future.
“These could include Women’s Open and Men’s Open tournaments, so we have both sets of players competing for better opportunities,” Atkins explained. “That’s the only way that we can push this tournament to its fullest potential.”
On court at the Raymond Forde Tennis Centre in Wildey. in the doubles final the pair of Russell Moseley and Christian Blunte, were defeated 7-5, 6-1 by Lucas Davis and Tyler Davis. In the singles final, Lucas Davis returned to defeat Moseley 6-2, 6-2.
From a competitive standpoint, Atkins said this year’s event surpassed the previous two editions.
“We still had high level players such as Lucas Davis and Russell Mosley and other national players such as Ammon Archer and Christian Blunte. In terms of quality it was definitely on par with the exception of Davis Cup player Xavier Lawrence that we had last year, but still it was a very good tournament,” Atkins suggested.
The tournament enjoyed significant support from junior players, which pleased Atkins, who sees the event as having great potential to assist in their development.
“ I was very pleased because most of the youngsters here that play for Barbados go over to America and other neighboring islands to play tournaments.
“A number of them came back to play in the Southwest Open because they could see how the UTR, (Universal Tennis Ranking) could benefit them,” Atkins added.
Atkins said the UTR system could help boost international participation in future tournaments.
(KH)
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