Last weekend I played in my first tennis tournament. My coach signed me up because he believes I need match practise, and I agree. I don’t know where he signed me up as he didn’t offer me a website to register on, he simply asked for my details and 50 Ringgit, and SMSed me later in the day to say I was all set.

I lost 4–8 in the first round (matches are first to eight games, win by two, tie-break at 8–8), but that’s not the important part. The important part is this tennis tournament was set up, advertised, and organised by local tennis players. There was no club or organisation involved. By players, for players.

This is amazing and inspiring to me.

There is a similar tournament set up by two self-proclaimed tennis ‘fanatics’, called the Community Tennis Open, or CTO. The CTO has a decent website (and a Facebook page) so it’s easy to sign up, see registrations and results, and interact with the organisers.

In addition to a bi-yearly (I think) tournament, they have a quarterly ladder system whereby registered players challenge other registered players for a game at least every two weeks (or you lose a spot on the ladder). It’s all run by SMS and email: the challenges, accepted challenges, match venues, and times of play, are communicated between the players themselves; the results of the matches, disputes, defaults etc are SMSed or emailed to the organisers. Check out the detail in the rules!

The whole thing is based on community, the age-old honesty system, and the simple desire to play tennis regularly.

Can’t wait to get involved.

 ∞     Tags: Kuala Lumpur, Tennis     Posted in Blog