The national team coach for tennis in Nigeria, Rotimi Akinloye has lamented the inadequate number of sponsors for the federation.
Akinloye was speaking on a monitored live programme on Channels Televison; Sports this morning. He said the inability of the tennis federation to produce worldwide stars like Andy Murray, Serena and Venus Willams and Rafael Nadal, Akinloye said the federation must have a world class environment to produce world class talents like that.
On the issues of a lack of competitions and tournament in the sport, the coach said: “Tennis is a capital intensive sport and you need money to actualize our various tournaments and that is where sponsorship come to play. Sponsors are not there, the few ones that we have, we give kudos to them and pray that we have more sponsors.”
The coach however said having just two competitions is not the issue with producing world class stars but a lack of junior tournaments. He said: “We must have junior tournament because tomorrow we are going to rely on this junior ones to take over the current crop of experienced players. We have never been short of good players but they dont have the opportunity to go for international events.”
The coach said if the federation has sponsors to take players to events to test themselves against international rivals.
The federation which is preparing for the All Africa Games in Congo later this month has 16 players already in its Abuja camp. 8 men and 8 female players are on trials for the AAG.
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