Liew (fourth left) receives the CM Cup and sponsorship from Abang Johari while SLTA deputy president Douglas Telajan and organising committee members look on.
KUCHING: The 31st Sarawak Chief Minister’s Cup (I) ITF Junior Tennis Championship (Grade 1) has become one of the highly rated events on the International Tennis Federation (ITF) calendar.
“I think we are very highly rated. I don’t know about the ratings system but we have always received a lot of compliments from ITF that whenever they consider to award the next event, they always consider Kuching, Sarawak as the priority.
“That indicates the confidence ratings that we are highly rated in the ITF,” said event organising chairman Dato Patrick Liew, who is the president of the Sarawak Lawn Tennis Association (SLTA).
According to him, some of the top ITF officials like Wayne McKewen from Australia, Patrick O’Rourke from New Zealand, Catherine Michie from United Kingdom had come to Kuching to see how the ITF events were run and were very impressed with SLTA capabilities.
“We have been running this CM’s Cup for the last 20 years and we are still going strong. Each year we never failed to attract more than 200 players, coaches and parents from over 20 countries to come down to Kuching.
“We also thank the state government who actually contributed the sponsorship for us to organise this event,” he said after receiving the Sarawak Chief Minister’s Cup and sponsorship of RM80,000 from the Chief Minister Datuk Patinggi Abang Johari Tun Openg at the latter’s office at Wisma Bapa Malaysia in Petra Jaya yesterday.
Due to SLTA’s good track record, Liew said SLTA will be hosting the Junior Davis Cup and the Junior Fed Cup qualifying events next month where 16 teams will be competing in each event.
“Based on our past year’s estimation, we probably brought in year’s spin-offs of RM4 million to the state economy for organising the international tennis events.
He said apart from Kuching (Malaysia), Bangkok (Thailand) is the other city hosting the prestigious junior tennis championship in the South-east Asia region.
“When we organised the first international event in 1999, many people did not know where Kuching was and they couldn’t even find us on the map so many of them landed at the Kuala Lumpur airport,” Liew recalled.
“But now whenever Kuching, Sarawak is mentioned, everybody talked about it. In fact, most of the players when they return to their countries, they always refer to this event as a “must play” tournament.
“They like it here because they loved the food here, they like the scenery, the culture and no traffic jam.
“We can see many players who come back here to play,” said Liew who added that it gave SLTA the satisfaction that many of the junior players who competed in Kuching went on to play in the Junior Grand Slams.