Legendary Abdulmumin Babalola and Shehu Lawal are among the senior tennis players who will be participating at the Dala Hard Court tournament in Kano.
Also, Henry Atseye, who has taken a course on officiating as well as Clifford Enosoregbe, a former national champion and number one player, will be battling for honors at the annual tournament holding in the northern part of Nigeria.
Of these players, however, only Atseye is among the top ten players on the last national rankings while Babalola is the closest to the top ten, he is presently ranked 11 in Nigeria.
Lawal and Enosoregbe, on the other hand, are ranked 14th and 12th respectively, a reflection of the improvement made by younger players over the years.
The draws prepared on Sunday evening and made available to Nigeria Tennis Live by Mr. Saidu Musa, the Chief Referee, shows that the Nigerian top player does not play a Singles game on the first day of the competition. Not even Lawal, Babalola or Enosoregbe will be in Singles action.
At this year’s tournament, especially with the absence of Sylvester Emmanuel, Joseph Imeh seems to be the clear favourite to land the trophy and become third time lucky in the ancient city of Kano.
Atseye is the only one of the senior players who will be participating in a Singles match on Monday. He opens his account against Michael Chima.
Legendary Babalola will partner Lawal to battle Abayomi Philip and Tochukwu Ezeh in one of the early Doubles fixtures in Kano.
Nigeria’s current number one player, Imeh will partner his regular Doubles mate, Albert Bikom to continue their impressive Doubles form with their first match against the pair of Sani Auwallu and Jibrin Hassan.
Nigeria Tennis Live will monitor activities in Kano and report to our audience who have been yearning for daily updates from the competition.