Several home-grown talents aced their rivals when Gunnedah hosted the first round of the Tennis NSW Super Series on the weekend.
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Aaron Osmond (Division 9-12), Isabelle Moore (Division 7-9 Pool 2), Jai McInnes (Division 1-4 Pool 1) and Blake Nobilo (Division 1-4 Pool 2) all won their respective divisions of the novel tournament, while Taya Powell, who lives in Tamworth but trains in Gunnedah, and Lucy Gainsford finished runners-up, the latter to Moore.
"It's the first of this type of tournament to be played in our region," tournament director Dale Martin said.
Rather than using age and/or gender to determine divisions, the Super Series is more 'level-based', utilising the Universal Tennis Rating.
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The tournament was played in a round robin format and saw players hitting the court for five best of three matches.
"It was a good test for a lot of the kids because they haven't had any match play for about three months," Martin said.
While many of them have been back training for a little while now, they are lacking that match fitness.
It was the second tournament to be played in the region since the COVID pandemic with Inverell hosting the first North West Return to Tennis event late last month.
The next UTR event will be held at Narrabri on July 18 and precede the Return to Tennis event. Martin said they are looking to do the same when Armidale is scheduled to hold it's Return to Tennis event.
"We decided to put these three or four extra tournaments on just to try and give players in the region a bit more tennis," he said, thanking the tennis club for hosting the event and Ellie Ryan from NSW Tennis for getting the tournament off the ground.
He said the kids are excited about getting back into some competitive tennis with a good roll-up for the Inverell event. They had to have a limit of 50 for the weekend due to the expected longer time on court with the three sets.
Osmond and Powell will this weekend head to Gosford for another UTR event.
"Everyone's getting back into it and getting a feel for tournaments again," Martin said.
Locally the Wednesday night and Saturday afternoon winter competitions have started up again.
"We've got back into that in the last couple of weeks," he said.
He said they have teams for the Saturday competition but anyone interested in the Wednesday competition is welcome to come along at 6pm on Wednesday night.
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