Dubai: UAE tennis is going through a positive moment having just secured a return to Group III of the Davis Cup Asia/Oceania zone, and if there is one man who deserves credit for his role in that feat, it is Jorge Martin Munoz, the new national team coach.
The 42-year-old Spaniard arrived from the Madrid Tennis Federation in March, an appointment that was a consequence of the pact signed between the reputed Spanish body and Tennis Emirates last October. And in his first assignment, he has shown just why the men in Madrid reckoned he was the ideal candidate to change UAE tennis for the better.
Feeling at home
"When this possibility came to the Madrid Tennis Federation, I thought all right, I'm ready to go," said Munoz. However, it was not just the challenge of strengthening UAE tennis that influenced Munoz's decision to leave Spain. "I'm really very much in love with the Arab culture. I love the south of my country because it is full of Arab culture," he said. "When the Madrid Tennis Federation asked me, ‘Do you want to go to the Middle East?' I said, ‘All right, it's not going to be difficult for me'. If they had asked, ‘Do you want to go to London?' I would have been, like, ‘Not really'."
He added: "The director had confidence in me and said, ‘You have to go, because you are the best person we can send, [you are] like an ambassador of the Madrid Tennis Federation'."
Having kicked off his UAE stint in promising fashion, Munoz is eager to remain at the helm of the national squad beyond his three-month deal which runs out on June 10. "I come from Spain where we have a good culture in tennis. But this is a new experience for me so I'm really very happy. We won, and I really want to continue with this team for the future. I think this is going to help the next generation play tennis."
Munoz's offer will be a hard one for Tennis Emirates to refuse on the evidence of his impact on the UAE squad in just 11 days in Jordan. However, the future of Emirati tennis appears to be of greater concern to him rather than his own. "Here in the UAE, there isn't much of a tennis culture as the kids like football, basketball, handball but not tennis," he said. "We have to try and take tennis to the little ones. We have go to the schools. We'll be going to schools in May to do a tennis clinic and teach them about tennis."
