Michail Pervolarakis of Cyprus and Great Britain’s Dominique Covington were given pride of place in the boys and girls categories respectively when the draw for the first of the back-to-back Oman ITF Junior (Under-18) tournaments was organised at the Sultan Qaboos Sports Complex yesterday. Michail Pervolarakis, who stands at 216 in the ITF junior rankings, will begin his campaign today in the first Grade 4 event to be organised by the Oman Tennis Association against Egehan Sertkaya of Turkey.
Convington, who is ranked 283, will take on qualifier Apolline Rassat of France. The other seeds in the boys section are Belgium’s Xander Veys (2), Germany’s Milen Ianakeiv (3) and Turkey’s Mert Aadanali (4), Turkey’s Cem Hizlialp (5), Cyprus Konstantinos Ilia (6), Turkmenistan’s Aleksandr Ernepesov (7) and Latvia Arturs Lazdins (8). For sixth seed Konstantinos Ilia this is his second visit to the Sultanate after having come here in 2012 when he reached the singles quarterfinals in the Oman ITF Junior 2 tournament.
Like Konstantinos, girls seventh seed Teodora Radosavljevic aand number eight Valentina Kulikovaalso played in the same tournament last year. While the former lost in the semifinals of both single and doubles, the latter went on to win the doubles title after exiting from the singles at the last 16 stage. The other seeds in the girls draw are Kazakhstan’s Yekaterina Gubanova (2), Mara Argyriou (3) of Cyprus, Turkey’s Muge Topsel (4), Russia’s Anna Blinkova (5) and Germany’s Ann-Christin Nilsson (6).