Dubai: The chief umpire for the US Open was on a mission in Dubai to scout and develop tennis officials from the Middle East.
Bruce Littrell, who has been serving as an official with the United States Tennis Association (USTA) for nearly three decades before being named as the chief umpire for the US Open last year, was here during the Dubai Duty Free Championships for the past fortnight to carry out his task.
“I came here to experience what the Middle East officiating role was and establish a relationship within the region and the USA. As a Grand Slam nation, we have a responsibility of reaching out to other countries with the hope that we can assist in the development of international exchange programmes that will be mutually beneficial,” Littrell told Gulf News.
Littrell, who served as deputy chief umpire at the 2014 US Open, succeeded former Chief Umpire Phyllis Walker. Last year, he worked under US Open Tournament Referee Brian Earley and the Grand Slam chief of supervisors to oversee the umpires throughout the tournament, create the daily schedule of on-court assignments for officials and establish set procedures that were used throughout the final Grand Slam of the season.
“I have seen some really promising tennis officials from the region and some of these have already been to the US Open in the past more than once. Some of the other officials have shown a lot of promise. All they need is a little more training. I have seen that they have the love that you have to have to be a great official. That’s exciting to me, and I hope I will be able to work with not only Dubai, but Egypt and other tennis-loving countries in the region. This can help develop their officials and at the same time we can develop our own,” he added.
The past two weeks spent at the Dubai Tennis Championships have helped Littrell to have a first-hand experience of the officiating levels here. “In terms of quality I would say the officials here are somewhere in the middle, but that may be because they don’t have as much opportunity to work. There is not as much tennis that you need to provide them with the experience. There are not many circuit events here, whereas in the US we have as many as 100 Circuit and Challenger tournaments on the circuit,” he observed.
“Some of the things that could occur is identifying strong officials and then get a programme going to train them. They don’t have too many officials, but there is so much talent here. Just imagine if the number of tournaments had increased. We need to find them the opportunities to work and we need to develop a world-wide training and a world-wide opportunity programme for the officials,” Littrell added.
“It doesn’t come overnight, but I am very excited to be working here. Together we want something for the sport. My goal is see what opportunities we could develop. It’s a good start for me.”
