Nigeria Tennis Players Need More Competitions For Rankings - Babalola

Nigeria Tennis Players Need More Competitions For Rankings - Babalola 

By Editor

One of Nigeria top tennis players, Abdulmumuni Babalola, has called on the Nigeria Tennis Federation (NTF) to organise more competitions for tennis players in the country. 

Babalola stated this at the just-concluded 2nd Davnotch National Open Championship where he won the Men's Doubles event pairing with Shehu Lawal to defeat Nonso Madueke and Henry Atseye. 

While commending the leadership of the NTF for introducing doping to checkmate drug abuse among the players, he said the federation need to organise more competitions for upcoming and young players at the grassroots to keep them busy and help Nigeria rankings. He said the players need more games and exposure as it is done in Europe where kids are introduced to different ball stages in their development. 

"The Nigeria Tennis Federation should organise tennis clinics for the junior ones because if there is no grassroots programme for the upcoming ones I don't think we are going anywhere. The most difficult player in the world right now, Rafael Ni Ankara, and others like him passed through stages of the balls; the red balls, orange balls and green balls before the yellow balls. 

"The red balls is for under 10 which is the foundation after which the orange balls will be introduced to them. It is a gradual process to all ball stages. We need more competitions at the grassroots because every weekend in Europe, all kids are engaged in one tournaments or the other. But here we play tournaments once in three months, this will not help our rankings," he said. 

Babalola advised younger players to always think like professionals and keep away from drugs. He called on them to be committed and keep to other routines especially bedtime.