Overwhelming response from all participants! The entries just kept coming. As the motive behind this tournament was to get maximum people to play, we kept adding players to the draw.
The Open category draw was full so we had to add qualifying rounds.
Nandan Bal inaugurated the tournament at 9:30 AM today. Thanks Nandan for agreeing to come to boost the morale of our participants. Thanks to Nitin Joshi, Tennis Secretary, Deccan Gymkhana for the courts.
Hats off to Kaushik Apte and Amit Gokhale for participating. They have never played tennis before and picked up racquets this week to play. Ajit Bhandarkar played a tournament after a gap of eight years!
We have had participation from Baramati and Walchandnagar! Apologies to Uday Inamdar and Dr. Gokhale for not being able to schedule their match on time. Uday is an IT professional, participating in the above 40 years category, had interviews scheduled today and had to leave without playing.
Standout performance of the day was from Sangram Chaphekar. He and Dhananjay Kawde had their hands full when they matched up against Ketan Dhumal and Yuvraj Harale in the quarterfinals of the open category. Sangram twisted his ankle in the second game of the match and played the rest of the match with a limp that got worse as the match progressed. They ended up winning 8-6.
There were many stories of gritty performances and great matches today. More importantly all the players who play at different tennis clubs all over Pune and outside, made an effort to schedule their weekend to participate. All of them pushed themselves and their bodies beyond their normal limits of endurance. There were many matches won but the real winner was TENNIS!
Semi finals and finals will be played on Sunday 24 Feb 2008
Schedules will be put up at Deccan Gymkhana on 21 Feb 2008
Mukund Joshi & Sudhir Ranade
2 comments:
This was a great start for what needs to become an annual feature on the Pune tennis calendar. The goal was to get a lot of people involved and excited and I think that was achieved . Congrats to Mukund and Sudhir for doing a great job, hopefully we will have many more such events to participate.
Congrats to Mukund and Sudhir for good job.....(not because they allowed us to participate :-) )
I hope next time we will get to play in this tournament under lights.
Now we are looking forward to dinner party on the 24th.
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