Why Covid restrictions have stopped Tennis Kenya's restart plans

When the Sports Ministry released the official resumption of sports guidelines exactly a month ago the tennis fraternity was excited that action on the court would soon resume.

After all, in the guidelines the Ministry had given non-contact sports the green light to restart.

All outdoor recreational and non-contact sporting activities including athletics, golf, motorsport,cricket,cycling, badminton, table tennis and lawn tennis were to reopen after sending their calendar of events to the Sports Ministry by September 30.

However, according to Tennis Kenya executive officer, Nancy Nduku, the guidelines given to them had more restrictions than they had anticipated, forcing them to seek more clarifications on their planned activities before proceeding with their calendar for this year.

Tennis Kenya’s main concern is with the junior events that form a bullk of their activities.

Nduku said the guidelines indicated that the junior tournaments for players under 18 years will remain suspended.

This has proved to be a major challenge for the federation as the majority of their national team players are juniors.

The national teams that include the Davis Cup, FED Cup and wheelchair have less than 20 players.

“We have also written a letter to the ministry asking them to slightly loosen the restrictions on our activities,” said Nduku.

“We are ready and willing to follow the necessary Covid-19 precautionary measures as we handle our junior players who make up the majority of our national team membership and play in our tournaments.

“We are also aware that for now we will be forced to avoid international competitions as we strive to flatten the curve of the  virus spread,” added Nduku.

Tennis Kenya president James Kenani had told Nation Sport earlier that they had received resumption guidelines from the International Tennis Federation (ITF) in conjunction with the World Health Organization (WHO).

The protocols advised starting off activities by just playing singles matches.

With this in hand, Kenani said they  were hoping that the guidelines would favour them in restarting most of their events. However, none of the tournaments involving single matches have commenced.

Nduku said that as long as the restrictions on juniors remain in place, Tennis Kenya will be forced to count their losses this year.

“We were hoping to start off with the local Under -18 tourneys in November and then proceed to international events early next year, but with the phased reopening of activities, our local tournaments, especially for the juniors will suffer a huge loss this year,” she said.

Aside from the junior tournaments remaining suspended, tennis also had other restrictions within the guidelines including players wearing masks at all times unless when playing on the court, and no showering within the match venues.