{"id":3409,"date":"2011-10-21T07:31:54","date_gmt":"2011-10-20T22:01:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/sa\/?p=3409"},"modified":"2011-10-21T07:31:54","modified_gmt":"2011-10-20T22:01:54","slug":"advertiser-key-players-join-the-national-tennis-comp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/sa\/news\/2011\/10\/21\/advertiser-key-players-join-the-national-tennis-comp","title":{"rendered":"ADVERTISER: Key players join the national tennis comp"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Written by Reece Homfray, Advertiser<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>JUNIOR Wimbledon champion Luke Saville and Barbados Davis Cup player Haydn Lewis headline the inaugural National Tennis League in Adelaide next month.<\/p>\n<p>Saville has signed with Somerton Park Sharks while Lewis \u2013 who has a 23-6 Davis Cup record \u2013 will play for Woodville-Glengarry Wanderers. The new league will involve Victoria, Western Australia and South Australia, with finalists to meet at Melbourne Park during the Australian Open in January.<\/p>\n<p>The WA league features world No. 80 Matthew Ebden, who lost to superstar Andy Murray in the Shanghai Masters quarter finals last week. The SA division consists of six men\u2019s and women\u2019s teams playing a round-robin format before finals at Memorial Drive on December 22.<\/p>\n<p>Tennis SA chief executive Alistair MacDonald, a key driver of the new competition, said there was \u201cgenuine excitement\u201d among teams.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think that\u2019s from the opportunity to play during the second week of the Australian Open,\u201d MacDonald said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ve got good teams with very strong lists.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Saville, 17, will return from a junior tournament in Japan for round one under lights at Millswood on November 3. \u201cIt\u2019s great to have Luke on board,\u201d MacDonald said.<\/p>\n<p>Players will be paid weekly according to their results. Winning men\u2019s and women\u2019s teams will get $4000.<\/p>\n<p>The long-term vision is for the NTL to expand to an Asian-Australian league with franchised teams.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>JUNIOR Wimbledon champion Luke Saville headline the inaugural National Tennis League.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5915,"featured_media":3410,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/sa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/sa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/sa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/sa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5915"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/sa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/sa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3409\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/sa\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/sa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/sa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/sa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}