Oceania Tennis Federation concludes executive meeting

Next year’s Davis Cup and Fed Cup competitions as well as finances were among the topics discussed during Oceania Tennis Federation’s yearly executive meeting held last July 21 and 22 in Nadi, Fiji.

With the Pacific Oceania Davis Cup team gaining promotion to Group 2 for 2005 the committee discussed a range of issues including staging a first-ever tie in a Pacific islands nation and ways to assist the team in its preparation for a first round tie in March.

The draw for the 2005 competition, which will determine the opposition and home or away status, will take place in London at the end of September. If Pacific Oceania is awarded a home tie, OTF will seek expressions of interest in hosting the tie from nations with a suitable venue.

After suffering significant losses over the past two years, the OTF committee is determined to take steps to balance the budget in 2005. As a result, the funding for the OTF General Meeting in January will be different with each nation asked to pay a significant proportion of its costs. Details will be sent to nations in October.

Up until now OTF has been the only regional association that pays for members to attend the general meeting. While not wanting to cut tennis activities and programs unless absolutely necessary the committee decided not to enter a Fed Cup team from Pacific Oceania. This is because some of the leading players had indicated they would not be available and it was felt development funds would be better spent on getting new players to the right level for Fed Cup in 2006 and beyond.

After the first day of the meeting the executive committee paid a visit to the ITF house in Lautoka, met the scholarship players and watched them train at the regional training centre. While at the center, some of the committee members took the ITN test for the first time.

The rankings in the “competitive” test came down to the final serving section with Tennis New Zealand CEO Don Turner coming out top (ITN 4, 271 points). Northern Mariana Islands Tennis Association president Jeff Race (ITN 5, 259 points), OTF executive officer Pat O’Rourke (ITN 6, 240 points) and OTF and Tennis Australia president Geoff Pollard (ITN 6, 232 points) were close behind. (Mark Rabago)