Dear Editor,
There has been a serious oversight by the new Guyana Lawn Tennis Association (GLTA) Committee in choosing the top 4 players in this year’s Banks Masters of the Open singles. The 4 players were Philip Squires, Ezra Sue Ho, Anthony Downes and Leyland Leacock.
These players were selected by the GLTA Committee which said they had selected the best tennis players in Guyana who had excelled in tournaments over the last 2 years and seeded them. The Banks Masters has always been the diamond in the crown for the top 4 tennis players in each category. We used to have at least 14 categories in the past, but somehow this year it came down to 8 categories.
I cannot believe that Banks DIH would not honour the 14 categories that were played at this year’s 2009 Pegasus Open Tennis Championships by not allowing the top 4 players in each category to take part in the end of year Masters Championships like they always used to when Mr Nestor was alive. I would not like to think that the finances needed to run the Masters tournament were too much, as Banks has always been very, very generous with their prize money for this particular Masters competition.
I was not expecting to play in the Banks Masters this year if there was going to be one, because I lost to Leyland Leacock in the ¼ finals, but when I read the Sunday Stabroek on December 13 and saw the name Shelly Daly Ramdyhan playing in the ladies Open Singles Semi-Finals and read the criteria they used, I then knew how she got into the Masters. I knew then a mistake had been made in my case because if you are going back two years to choose a player who has achieved the points and position in the past tournaments played, then I have a semi-finals place in 2008, which is 60 points, and a ¼ finals place in 2009, which is 40 points. That gives me 100 points.
Leyland Leacock only has 60 points for this year’s semi-finals because he failed in 2008 to get past the round of 16.
If the Banks Masters was like it used to be in years gone by, then Leacock would play in this year’s Masters and Shelly Daly Ramdyhan would not, because she did not play in the only tournament this year. And that was the criterion. But the GLTA Committee by going back two years to the 2008 Pegasus Open Singles Women’s Championship, which Daly won, would give her 100 points, which I think is enough for her to qualify for this year’s Masters Championship.
Past champions are never given preference in future Banks Masters tournaments.
It now looks as if the senior tennis players are not respected in the tennis fraternity, which they bolstered through the years when they were young, and now that they might not be able to run as fast across the courts as younger players, their categories in the Masters, like the 35 and over singles and doubles, the 45 and over singles and doubles and the 55 and over doubles have been taken away from them. Why?
I would like someone from the GLTA Committee to explain why my name was omitted from the top 4 for the Masters Open Singles 2009, since the GLTA said they were going back two years to select the players for the Banks Masters.
Maybe my name has been around tennis for far too long. It is now clear to see what the new GLTA has in store for senior players when they presented the winners of several senior categories with the poorest quality trophies ever in a Pegasus Open Tennis championship a few months ago. It was so insulting to the players who worked so hard on the courts, and some of the tennis members are threatening to put the trophies in a box and return them.
I also spoke to Phillip Squires who is our 2009 Pegasus Open Singles Champion, a member of the GLTA and also the Chairman of the Tournament Committee, and he said to me that he didn’t know what criteria the GLTA Committee used to select the top 4 players. All Squires was asked to do was to hand over the results of the last 2 Pegasus Championships, 2008 and 2009, to the GLTA Committee.
If the great Peter D’Aguiar was alive this could have never happened, because he was an ardent lover of tennis and that is why he had a court built at Banks DIH Head Office.
Yours faithfully,
Rudy Grant
