Dubai: Tennis in the UAE stands to make major gains should the nation adopt a blueprint envisaged by Tennis Emirates (TE), the governing body for the sport in the country.

Hailing the vision and foresight of Khalaf Al Habtoor, Chairman, Al Habtoor Group for starting the first-ever international women’s tennis tournament in the UAE way back in 1998, Sara Baker, General Secretary, TE, disclosed that the ideal thing now would be the creation of an academy for women through close coordination with Al Habtoor himself.

“We are struggling as a federation to make the UAE society understand that this is a great sport for all genders. I think through Al Habtoor, what we do is create an academy for females, young and old, and develop UAE nationals in specific. I think this is a good time now for us to start especially because this tournament has been upgraded to a $100,000 event,” Baker told media at the draws ceremony of the 19th Al Habtoor Tennis Challenge (AHTC), on Sunday.

“We need to get more Emiratis to start coming in, even if it is only for the qualifiers. We are having a great gap. Now we have five young girls and they are good; they are not so bad. But that is not enough. We need to keep building up, as a pyramid and we need to keep on growing,” she added.

The AHTC has not seen a single UAE girl play either in the qualifiers or the main draw in it’s history. The tournament has been held each year — except in 2002 — and has been upgraded to a $100,000 event with hospitality for players and their guests starting this year.

In the past, the UAE has had girl tennis players, who had shown promise and then faded away due to a variety of reasons. Baker, however, is insistent that this mindset can be altered. “We need the nationals to come and watch the tournaments. I mean not just the ATP and WTA or Mubadala Championships for instance but they need to watch all tournaments and at all levels. The more they see girls playing, the more accepting they will become,” the official offered.

“Tennis is a really good sport in all aspects — psychologically, physically, everything. So we need to take tennis to the schools, specifically in the girls’ schools. We are working with the Ministry of Education towards that and that’s how we plan to go about with it,” Baker added.