PESHAWAR:Haji Malik Umar Khattab Khalil Memorial Junior Tennis Academy setup and started its working under qualified coaches at Peshawar Sports Complex’s Synthetic Tennis Courts here. The official inauguration was held on Friday when well-known Cardiologist and Senior Vice President of KP Tennis Association Prof. Dr. Farhat Abbas along with the Secretary of Provincial Tennis Association Umar Ayaz Khan Khalil, the eldest son of late Haji Malik Umar Khattab among other personalities were present at the event.
In this regard, Secretary of the Provincial Tennis Association Umar Ayaz Khalil while talking to the media, said that the academy was started for one year with assistance of Canada based tennis player Ijaz Khan. Professor Farhat Abbas will also assure his assistance in running the affairs of the first Tennis Academy in Peshawar.
He training will be provided to the four best players of age U8, U10 and U12 of the Academy. Umar Ayaz Khalil and his fellow tennis player Ijaz Ahmed and Dr Farhat Abbas will provide the players in the academy with racket, ball, tennis grip, shoes, strings, coaching and other facilities.
Ayaz Khalil said that in today’s era of inflation, it had become very difficult for poor players to train on a daily basis and seeing this, he has helped to train the best twelve players of three categories U8, U12 and U14.
He said that the aim and objective of setting up Tennis Academy was to prepare players for national and international competitions. It is hoped that the year-long training academy will benefit the players, Umar Ayaz said.
The players who were short-listed purely on performance for the camp including Salar Khan, Muhammad Faizan, Ryan Umar, Manahil in the U8 category, Shaharyar Khan, Inam Ullah, Abdullah Farman, Zohaib Amjad, Anees Khan, Ahmad Khan, Zain Roman, Safi Ullah, Ihsan Ullah and Muhammad Nouman in U12 category. He said some players from the U14 and Girls would also be included for training in the Tennis Academy.
He said it would ensure provision of facilities for all games including tennis rackets, tennis strings, tennis grips, tennis shoes with free coaching for one year time under Haji Malik Umar Khattab Memorial Tennis Camp to improve the overall condition of the players at the grassroots level.
He said the services of qualified coaches have been hired for this purpose and on daily basis there would be practice matches with each other and a performance evolution data would also be compiled so that to judge each and every players improvement in the Academy.