TENNIS Jamaica president John Bailey said his administration is trying to lease and refurbish a selected number of tennis courts across the island in an effort to improve the sport and make it more accessible to the public, especially the young.

Speaking at the launch of the Hi-Pro Ace Supercentre Tennis Open last week, Bailey said Tennis Jamaica was in talks with a number of parties who are interested in working with them to rehabilitate the courts for public usage.

“We’re working with the parties concerned; we’ve written to them, we’ve communicated with them and met them and they seem to be in favour of working with us to get the courts rehabilitated,” Bailey told the Jamaica Obsever.

He said the national tennis body has already identified the Ocho Rios courts for such use and was in talks with the UDC about courts located at Catherine Hall in Montego Bay.

“We want to get more courts so we can be training youths all over the island consistently. All the courts in Ocho Rios and MoBay are in the hotels and… children can’t go there and play, so we’re working on getting courts,” he explained.

“We’re also hoping that these courts will be leased to Tennis Jamaica as we plan to have coaches there so that the children could come to these courts and improve their game,” he added.

Bailey estimates that the courts in Ocho Rios will cost about $4 million to remodel. However, he said the MoBay courts would be a lot more costly as they will have to be constructed from start.

“In MoBay the area that we’re talking does not have any courts now, so we will have to raise the money and build the courts. It will be a little more because we want that to be a tennis centre where we have four to five courts, an administration office and a clubhouse facility,” he said.

The tennis boss said the project in Ocho Rios should begin in about three months’ time and he is hoping the MoBay project can get underway in about a year.

He strongly believes if they get corporate Jamaica’s support for this project and get the courts up and running under Tennis Jamaica’s control, it will improve the country’s tennis in the future.

“The overall idea is just to get more public courts available for Tennis Jamaica to coach and train children across the island.

“If we give the youths opportunity and train them, coach them and guide them, we will produce and get some very good players in the years to come,” he said.

— Livingston Scott