Team tennis, new Jr. tourney coming to PTC

By PATRICK ENZOR
Item Sports Writer
penzor@theitem.com

With the QuickStart program in full swing at the Palmetto Tennis Center, the facility is taking the next step with starting a United States Tennis Association Junior Team Tennis program.

And that’s not all for the PTC. The former Iris Junior Championships is moving from a level 3 USTA South Carolina junior tennis tournament to a level 2. The name has changed to the South Carolina State Junior Open Championships and will welcome well over 100 more participants.

The tournament, slated from May 8-10, will also provide an opportunity for the champion of the girl’s 18-years-old age group. The champion will earn a wild card spot in the Palmetto Pro Open, a USTA pro circuit event from May 24-28 at the PTC.

“Normally what happens is they base it off your previous years enrollments,” said PTC head pro Brian Parkkonen on jumpring to level 2. “In our case, they are giving us a level 2 because of the winner of the girls’ 18 going as a wild card into the main draw. It’s a huge draw that no one else in the state has. That’s why they wanted to move us up to a level that will draw 250-300 players instead of the 115-120.

“In the main bulk of the draw — 10s through the 16s — will be from Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia and South Carolina,” he added. “For the girls 18s, we should have kids from all over the nation coming here. Last year we had girls from New York and all up and down the East Coast coming in.”

The team tennis program will begin May 17 and registration is open now at www.sumtertennis.org. It’s open for boys and girls, ages 6-18 and teams are co-ed and comprised of players of similar age and skill levels of beginner, intermediate and advanced.

Local teams can advance to state, sectional and national championships. The state championship will be held at the PTC July 17-19.

“We definitely wanted to do the 8-and-under and 10-and-under and we couldn’t do that without the QuickStart,” said assistant pro Tom Ruth. “We hold the state team tennis championships here and we figured we should have a league here also.”

Matches will be held on Sundays at 2 p.m. at the PTC. There will be a boys singles, a girls singles, boys doubles, girls doubles and mixed doubles matches for each classification match.

The eight and 10-years-old groups will be playing on the QuickStart courts. Everyone else will play on the full-sized courts.

“Team tennis brings more of a team-atmosphere like they have in high school and later if they want to play in college,” said Ruth. “So many times they just play individually throughout their life. Team tennis league is more like your normal sports league like your baseballs and softballs. Every game counts toward the team’s score.”

Last year’s Palmetto Pro Open has opened several avenues of advancement for the already-accomplished-PTC this season. Parkkonen hopes that continues.

“Ideally, the level 2 will be a stepping stone to a level 1,” he said. “Right now there is only one level 1 tournament (Southern Qualifier in Belton). It’ll take us a couple years to work this up, but as long as we keep that wild card in the girls 18 it’s a huge draw for us in getting bigger tournaments.”

Both Parkkonen and Ruth said that the six new courts across Theatre Drive helped with the process of both events.

“It would have been tough,” said Ruth. “We would have had to spread everybody out, but now we can get everybody playing at the same time on the same day. Otherwise we would have had to spread it out onto different days and different times, taking up the facility a lot more. Now we can just for two hours take it up for a little bit and be done.”