The numbers at the 2021 West Tamworth Tennis Club Seniors Tournament are set to be the best they've been "in a long time".
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Seventy players will turn out at the two-day event this weekend including plenty of entrants new to the West Tamworth tournament.
"We're very excited with [being at] capacity and the percentage of people that normally haven't come from Sydney and Newcastle," WTTC president Brian Brooking said.
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There will be plenty of well-known faces at the tournament as well including Narelle Follington.
The West Tamworth tennis player was a relative latecomer to the sport, taking up the game when she was 33, before she immersed herself in the seniors circuit when she was 35 and continued to do so for next 16, or so, years.
At her peak, Follington was travelling all over NSW in 2012 to accrue rankings points.
It paid off when she was selected in the Australian Over 45s team to compete in the Seniors World Championships in Turkey the following year.
Nowadays, Follington doesn't play as much. She tends to stick to the tournaments within three hours of Tamworth.
The hometown tournament is one Follington always looks forward to. She said it's enjoyable to play host once a year.
"It's definitely nice when everyone comes here. I've got people from Newcastle staying at my house," she said.
"And instead of putting them in age groups, we rank it so everyone gets good tennis the whole way through."
Follington was also looking forward to getting back into the swing of things after a quiet year on the seniors circuit due to COVID-19.
She's not the only one. The age limit has been lowered from 35 to 30 which will give younger players a chance to step up to seniors for the first time.
"There's not a lot in between juniors and 35 so that's why they've lowered the age now to 30s. There's a few people really excited because they're 30 and now they can play," she said.
Play starts at 8.30am each day and Brooking thanked volunteers, the committee and sponsors for help making the tournament possible.
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Ben Jaffrey
Ben is a content curator and journalist for The Land. He has been with ACM since 2015 and first worked at The Area News and then at the Northern Daily Leader. Ben first joined ACM Agri as a digital journalist for all seven agricultural mastheads in 2022 before shifting to The Land full-time in 2023.
Ben is a content curator and journalist for The Land. He has been with ACM since 2015 and first worked at The Area News and then at the Northern Daily Leader. Ben first joined ACM Agri as a digital journalist for all seven agricultural mastheads in 2022 before shifting to The Land full-time in 2023.
