THIRUVANANTHAPURAM:Young tennis trainees of the Trivandrum Tennis Club (TTC) on Wednesday had the opportunity to interact with some of India’s top tennis players on the sidelines of the Indian Oil XtraPremium ITF Futures international men’s tournament that is being held at the Tennis Club here from March 20 to 25.
Top seeded players of the tournament namely Prajnesh Gunneswaran, Sriram N Balaji and Vishnu Vardhan conducted a special tennis clinic for the selected trainees of TTC under the newly launched ‘Advanced Clinic for Excellence (ACE)’ programme of TTC which aims to produce International standard players from Kerala.
Close to 40 tennis players interacted with the trio who are in the city to attend the first ever ITF Futures event to be held in the state. Prajnesh and Balaji are part of the Indian team that will face Uzbekistan in the second round of the Asian-Oceania Zone Group 1 Davis Cup tie to be held in Bengaluru next month.
ACE focuses on the concept of ‘catch them young’ and will fine tune prospective talents from the Thiruvananthapuram district belonging to the age group of 10 to 12 years and 13 to 15 years as well as the trainees under the Community Tennis Program of the TTC.
ACE is headed by coach Biju Mani and supported by seven other coaches. TTC aims at conducting extensive tennis camps during weekends and holidays with a focus on improving player conditioning and fitness so as to enable them to perform better in state and national ranking tournaments.