ITF

Zione and Daina may have been saved by the ball, but ambitions to elevate the status of tennis in southern Africa go much further. ITF Development Officer Tapiwa Masunga is the person charged with coordinating efforts to promote and encourage tennis in southern Africa. A 36-year-old with a bachelor's degree in sports management from Florida and an executive master's in sports organisation and management from Belgium, she was a promising African junior player who trained at the ITF's former training centre in Pretoria, South Africa. She became the Development Officer for southern Africa in December 2017 after five years working for the Botswana National Olympic Committee. Listening to her talking about her work, it's clear so much of development efforts in southern Africa revolve around establishing the foundations that most tennis nations in the developed world take for granted. "When I first started, my main priority was to help national associations put structures in place to achieve their goals and enhance the profile of tennis within each nation," she says. "We obviously want to strive for performance players, but in many countries we first have to elevate the status of tennis, to allow the national associations to benefit from our various programmes." Masunga is passionate about putting structures in place, and why they are important to the future of tennis in this region. She is eager to see tennis thrive, both as a sport and as a vehicle for people to improve their lives. "We measure success by how a nation moves from point A to point B system-wise," she explains. "To develop players to the top level you first need to have proven systems and structures to operate efficiently. "Part of those systems is adequate data, and here we've used money from ITF digitalisation grants. We have signed most national associations up to the World Tennis Number, which is very exciting for us. As a system, WTN will help us capture the success of African tennis in terms of data: knowing how many players we have in Africa and at what levels. "This is not just about making tennis accessible to a lot of people. To get a player to a certain level you need resources, and data helps to secure funding. With data, national associations can approach potential sponsors with a product which we can quantify, so they can show them Below, le to right: Malawi's Zione Nkhoma; a Play Tennis course in Madagascar; Mengezi Sibanda of Zimbabwe ANGOLA NAMIBIA Atlantic Ocean 36 Summer 2023 ITF World DEVELOPMENT what return on their investment they can expect. Africa is not very big on data collection, and my experience convinces me we in tennis are leading the pack in Africa in terms of digitalisation and having a data capture system in place. Before, we were just guessing." Although southern Africa is made up largely of countries where tennis has little presence, the region does include two with Grand Slam champions: South Africa and Zimbabwe. In South Africa, the main priority is to improve "the dynamics of tennis", which effectively means getting more people of colour involved in tennis, as well as performing to a high standard. Here there is a high-performance success story, 20-year-old Kholo Montsi, who had an ITF junior ranking of 12, was junior No. 1 in Africa, and was selected for various Grand Slam Player Development Programme touring teams. He reached an ATP ranking of 600 in August 2022. Tapiwa Masunga describes Montsi as "one of our highlights," and he could clearly be a role model for other South Africans – indeed Africans in general – if he can establish himself in the world's top 100 and therefore gain regular access to Grand

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