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Junior tennis team leaves today for qualifying tourney

Published:Friday | February 2, 2018 | 12:00 AMLeroy Brown/Gleaner Writer
Damani Cain

Three of Jamaica's leading junior players - John Chin, Damani Cain and Keyondre Clarke - leave today for the Dominican Republic, to participate in the 2018 North/Central America and Caribbean Junior Davis Cup pre-qualifying tournament, which runs from February 5-11. They will be accompanied by coach Llockett McGregor.

Fourteen teams are participating in the tournament. The others are Barbados, Bermuda, Costa Rica, Cuba, Curacao, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, US Virgin islands, Panama, and Trinidad and Tobago. The top two teams will move on to the qualifying tournament in Mexico, which runs from April 26-28. It will be a round-robin format.

Coach McGregor told The Gleaner yesterday that there is no doubt in his mind that it will be a very competitive tournament, but the members of the team have been playing well over the past few months and he is "confident that they will acquit themselves well."

Chin, who played exceptional tennis throughout 2017, and is ranked at 1430 in the world by the ITF, is the number one player on the team, and will play both singles and doubles. Coach McGregor said yesterday that he is expecting a lot from all three players.

"They all have to pull their weight if we are to succeed, and I am confident that they will. They have been preparing for this event for a long time, and are playing at their best at this right now. I am sure that they will rise to the occasion," he added.

Tennis Jamaica president Aswad Morgan, who met with the players before their departure, wished them well and said that he was "hopeful that we have a good result. We are investing in our young players, and this type of exposure will serve them well."