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Serving up a delight: The Elite Tennis Academy in Dubai
The Elite Tennis Academy at Emirates Golf Club and Atlantis The Palm is offering aspiring tennis players in the UAE the chance to get some professional tennis coaching and really bring their game to the next level.
One of the initiatives is the Ladies Tennis Clinics – which are being held every morning, Monday to Thursday – and these have proved to be a huge hit with the expat community.
Emirates Golf Club hosts the clinics on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, while Atlantis The Palm hosts them on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
The clinics focus on the technical and tactical aspects of the game so there’s a lot of hitting involving various drills. But they also deal with match play techniques.
The two-hour sessions consist of a 30-minute hitting session with the coaches followed by an hour of selected drills which differ from week to week, and it ends with 30 minutes of team singles, queen of the court, “pontos” or a match against a coach.
After practice the participants can have a coffee poolside at the Emirates Golf Club or at Nasimi Beach at Atlantis Paulo Jose, Elite director at Emirates Golf Club, feels that for aspiring tennis players who want to finetune their skills, there’s no better academy to do so.
Jose said: “I think a lot of it comes down to the passion and dedication of our coaching staff. We are not satisfied if we do not see improvement whether it be in our ladies clinic, our competition players or our four- or five-year-old beginners.
"Most of our staff are from the Iberian peninsula and we follow the Spanish model for developing players which is based on hard work and humility,” he said.
The academy also recently started men’s evening squads twice a week as they felt there wasn’t a market for this in Dubai.
Javier Molina, the Academy’s head tennis professional at Atlantis The Palm, explains: “We have a very competitive group of guys in their late 30s and 40s who are very passionate about tennis and have previously played at a high level.”
Molina is a former top ATP pro with wins over a pair of former world No1s, Marat Safin and Juan Carlos Ferrero, and conducts these squads on Tuesday and Saturday evenings whilst also working with competition squads.
The academy has some fantastic tennis coaches at its disposal and none more so than the recently recruited Monika Schneider, a former top-20 ranked ITF player who has beaten Jelena Jankovic, Svetlana Kuznetsova and Samantha Stosur.
Luis Miguel, who is the Academy’s general manager, added: “We also host a number of tournaments for our members such as the breast cancer Pink tournament held recently and our Christmas tournament on December 16.”
What: Ladies Tennis Clinics and Men’s Tennis Squads by Elite Tennis Academy
Where: Emirates Golf Club and Atlantis The Palm
When: Ladies (Monday-Thursday mornings); Men (Tuesday and Saturday evenings)
Info: www.elitetennisdubai.com / E Mail dubai@equelite.com / Tel: Luis Miguel 050-6561625
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