SSC to serve big money at open
 

by Dinesh Weerawansa

History will be created when the highest ever prize money at a tennis tournament in Sri Lanka will be offered at the Singhalese Sports Club Open Championships to be worked off at the SSC Tennis Complex courts, Maitland Place from September 17 to 25.

The tournament will be hosted by SSC in association with the Sri Lanka Tennis Association for the second successive year. It is an open ranking tournament of the SLTA with Citi Bank as the principal sponsor, offering USD 1,000 for the men's singles champion and USD 500 for the women's singles champion.

The co-sponsors of the tournament are Prudential Assurence, Dimo and Reebok while Babolat will be the official ball of the week-long tournament which would offer a total prize money of Rs. 400,000/-, easily the highest ever prize money offered at a tennis tournament in Sri Lanka.

The SSC Citi Bank Open championship has received a total of 344 entries form 227 participants with all champion players who excelled at the recent Sri Lanka national championship making their presence. National champion and Davis Cup player Harshana Godamanne is seeded No.1 for the men's open with his Sri Lanka team mate Rohan de Silva as the bottom seed.

Rukmal Cooray and Sanka Athukorale are seeded No.3 and 4 respectively. Ranked No.1 for the women's single will be Jithmi Jayawickrema with Amita Arudpragasm as the bottom seed. Godamanne will pair off with Amrit Rupasinghe to make the top seed combination for men's doubles open in which Rohan de Silva and Rajiv Rajapakse are the bottom seeds. Experienced Shalini de Silva and Sobhini de Silva would form the No.1 seeded pair for women's doubles with Jayawickrema and Mahesh making the bottom seed pair.

The top seeds for Boys Under 10, 12, 14 and 18 would be Sharmal Dissanayake, Stephan Marin, Indika Wettasinghe and Amrit Rupasinghe respectively. Rukmal Cooray and Sanka Athukorale are seeded No.2 and 3 respectively for Boys Under-18 event. Deshani Liyanage and Madavi Suraweera are the top seeds in girls under 10 and 12 events respectively.

Promising teenager Nilupul Goonesekera is the top seed in both the girls Under-14 and 18 events.There will be a total of 30 matches to be played in the preliminary rounds to be worked off today and tomorrow while the main competition would get underway on Saturday with a total of 325 matches on the cards.

A special feature of the tournament would be presence of umpires from the first round itself. Rs. 50,000/- worth of Reebok gift vouchers would be presented to the semi finalists and the finalists of the junior events and the finalists of the veteran events from DSI group. In addition to the lavish prize money thrown, attractive challenge trophies awaits the winners.

President of the SSC, Daya Perera PC said it was a privilege and honour for the SSC to host the first ever junior international tournament outside the National Tennis Centre courts last year at their new tennis complex. He said the SSC open tournament is going from strength to strength.

President of the SLTA and the Secretary General of the Asian Tennis Federation, Suresh Subramanium commended SSC and its Tennis Committee for the exemplarily manner in which the tournament was conducted last year and for the top arrangements they have made for this year's tournament.

Subramanium, under whose leadership Sri Lanka tennis has made a good progress over the last few years, said SSC has set an example to other tennis playing clubs and that the SLTA us extremely happy with the professional way the SSC is conducting tournaments at their own premises.