{"id":3820,"date":"2012-08-28T15:26:27","date_gmt":"2012-08-28T05:56:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nt\/?p=3820"},"modified":"2012-08-28T15:26:27","modified_gmt":"2012-08-28T05:56:27","slug":"groth-to-lead-the-way-in-alice-springs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nt\/news\/2012\/08\/28\/groth-to-lead-the-way-in-alice-springs","title":{"rendered":"Groth to lead the way in Alice Springs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Former world number 220 <strong>Sam Groth<\/strong> will travel to Alice Springs next week to compete at the third annual\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/tournaments\/pro-tour\/events\/2012-aug-dec-events\/alice-springs-tennis-international\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"color: #0091d2\"><strong>Alice Springs Tennis International<\/strong><\/span> <\/a>to be held 2 &#8211; 9 September 2012.<\/p>\n<p>The talented 24 year old, who unofficially hit the fastest serve (263kph) at a Challenger event in South Korea in May, is sure to make waves on the fast blue courts of Tennis Alice Springs, where he is expected to be the top seed.<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8221; I&#8217;ve had a pretty good year so far, I&#8217;ve only really played three or four tournaments in Australia so I&#8217;m looking forward to playing my first one in a while.&#8221;<\/em> Groth said.<\/p>\n<p>2011 champion <strong>Michael Look<\/strong> will also be back to defend his maiden <span style=\"color: #0091d2\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/tournaments\/pro-tour\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"color: #0091d2\"><strong>Australian Pro Tour<\/strong> <\/span><\/a><\/span>title, which saw him defeat fellow Queenslander Benjamin Mitchell in straight sets in the final.<\/p>\n<p>Joining Groth and Look will be 2011 Junior Wimbledon and 2012 Australian Open Junior champion <strong>Luke Saville<\/strong> (544), <strong>James Lemke<\/strong> (463)\u00a0and <strong>Matthew Barton<\/strong> (494) plus a group of international players including three of Japan&#8217;s top 30 players, <strong>Kento Takeuchi<\/strong>, <strong>Gengo Kikuchi<\/strong> and <strong>Yusuke Watanuki<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>A host of junior talent is also set to compete for the USD$15,000 prize purse with AIS Scholarship holders <strong>Alex Bolt<\/strong> and <strong>Andrew Whittington<\/strong> likely to compete.<\/p>\n<p>The NT will have its share of talent in the qualifying draw, with <strong>George Shepheard,<\/strong> <strong>Matthew Delsar<\/strong>,<strong> Nicholas Whyte<\/strong>,<strong> Jake Johan <\/strong>and\u00a0<strong>Luke Horsfall<\/strong>\u00a0all looking to advance to the main draw.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/tournaments\/pro-tour\/events\/2012-aug-dec-events\/alice-springs-tennis-international\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"color: #0091d2\"><strong>Alice Springs Tennis International<\/strong><\/span> <\/a>is a FREE event for the public to attend. Qualifying will begin on Sunday 2 September with main draw matches commencing on Tuesday 4 September.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Former world number 220 Sam Groth will travel to Alice Springs next week to compete at the third annual\u00a0Alice Springs Tennis International to be held 2 &#8211; 9 September 2012. The talented 24 year old, who unofficially hit the fastest serve (263kph) at a Challenger event in South Korea in May, is sure to make [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5924,"featured_media":3821,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[61,66,123,124,10],"class_list":["post-3820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-alice-springs-tennis-association","tag-alice-springs-tennis-international","tag-australian-pro-tour","tag-sam-groth","tag-tennis-alice-springs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5924"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3820\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nt\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}