For the love of night tennis in Jozi

Neither rain nor thunder could stop the 64 members of Johannesburg’s tennis community from playing the tourney at Bryanston Country Club on January 13.

Joburg Tennis’s inaugural Jozi Night Lights tennis tournament drew a game crowd of participants for the event, which saw tennis played with plot-twists characteristic to the tournament.

Lisa Wade from Joburg Tennis laid out the rules.

“It’s the first event of its kind that we’re running– each match is composed of five tie-breaks,” Wade explained. “There are two ladies and two men in a team. The ties are made up of ladies’ singles, men’s singles, ladies’ doubles, men’s doubles, and mixed-doubles.

“To make it a bit more interesting, we’ve added some cards to it. Each team has been given four ‘advantage cards’ as we call them. Those give them certain advantages that can be played at any time,” Wade finished. “[Teams] may only use a card once in a tie – they can choose to use all four cards in one match, or they can spread them out over the five matches.”

The cards were steal-a-serve – which meant teams could steal their opponent’s serve; one-serve – where the opposite player only gets one serve, instead of a second serve as is commonplace in tennis; swap-a-player allowed a team to either swap out one of their teammates, or one of the opponent’s teammates based on how teams thought it could be used best to their advantage; and the veto card allowed teams to play at any time they didn’t like the card the other team’s played, to cancel its effect.

The participants comprised 16 teams of four people for the teams’ matches in contention for the cash incentive of R7 500 for the winners.

The top-scoring team from section A was the Black Outs. The top scorers from section B were Go-Go Gang, Kat’s Pack, Jozi Lightning, and the Racquet Engineers.

“We have a cash prize on offer tonight to be split over the three sections,” Wade said. “We’re trying to encourage a whole lot of increased participation as Joburg Tennis. We offer leagues at various times of the year. But we thought that there was a need for some shorter one-day events, and to get some enthusiasm – maybe try some different formats, get players to interact with other players that they haven’t.”

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