Dubai: The governing body for tennis in the country has initiated a fresh re-building process in an attempt to create a pool of players who will ultimately form a core of the national squad.

Mark Tennant, Director, Inspire 2 Coach from the University of Warwick Tennis Centre in the UK, is once again in the UAE conducting two separate three-day workshops for school teachers and coaches in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

"At the development stage, the ITF's Play and Stay campaign has really opened up peoples' eyes.

"We traditionally have this problem where lots of children have been attracted to tennis but they have not managed to stay as they have found it too boring or difficult. That trend is now being reversed. Tennis is now a booming sport at the lower levels internationally, and it will be the same in the UAE as well.

"I don't see any reason why it would be any different," Tennant told Gulf News on the sidelines of the Dubai workshop that was opened by Abdul Rahman Falaknaz, Vice President, Tennis Emirates at the Leaders' Centre in Al Ghusais on Monday. "I can have only so much impact while I am here. It is up to these teachers to take this to the next level," he added.

The UAE suffered a blow when the country slipped back into Group IV following its Davis Cup campaign held in Sri Lanka earlier this summer.

High standards

"Internationally, the game is being played at a higher level than before, but it can always be better. The standards of the top end of the game are incredibly high and I am sure the UAE will catch up through this effort," Tennant remarked.

The workshops in Dubai [till today] will be followed by another one at the Zayed Sports City from September 22-24. Both workshops are being held under the ITF's ‘Play and Stay' campaign in an attempt to push forward the world governing body's ‘Tennis Tens' initiative that will come into play from January 2012. As many as 70 physical education teachers, coaches and supervisors are part of this learning process.

"In any developmental programme we need a large number of players at the bottom base in schools.

"The idea is that these players learn to play and learn to compete in the schools and then from the school they progress to the local tennis club and then they are taken to the next level by the coach. And this is the way the national development programme is done. We do not have this base here and this is where I come in," Tennant said.

"We have 30 teachers here and if each one of them can create 10 or 20 players, then immediately we will have between 300 to 500 players who can comprise this base. And this is probably ten times the number of competitors we have at the moment," he said.