Local juniors heading for Africa tennis championships
Nadia Gouws and Carle Botha from Pretoria are on their way to Morocco for the African Junior Championships.
The South Africa’s girls under 12 junior tennis team, which includes two local players, qualified for the year end African Junior Championships when they upset more favoured countries during the recent Southern African Junior Championships played in Antananarivo, Madagascar.
More impressively was that it was the first time the team have competed on clay.
The girl’s team comprised of Kaitlyn Rumduth of Durban, Nadia Gouws and Carle Botha both of Pretoria.
After the girls made a clean sweep against Botswana and Zimbabwe, they took on Madagascar in their final matches. After clinching the title against top seeds, Madagascar 2-1, the South Africans qualified to compete in the continents final event in the first week of September in Morocco.
Team coach Terrey Schweitzer was thrilled by the overall performance.
“Our girls worked extremely hard on our first practice day to get used to playing and moving around on clay for the first time and adapted well all week to playing on the surface,” he said after the triumph.
Carle Botha opened for South Africa winning singles in a strenuous 7-6(11) 2-6 7-5 against Maholy Razakaniaina of Madagascar.
Nadia Gouws then won her singles 6-7 (2) 6-4 6-1 against Miotisoa Rasendra of Madagascar.
In doing so Gouws and Botha made sure that the have won all their singles matches at the tournament.
Unfortunately Kaitlyn Rumduth and Carle Botha then lost the dead doubles match 0-6 4-6 to Madagascar’s pair Maholy Razakaniaina and Randy Rakotoarilala, but the victory was already clinched with the singles matches.
The South Africa’s boys under 12 failed to qualify for the year end African Junior Championships after coming out fourth in the overall performance.
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