Providing players with an international competitive opportunity while at the same time helping them connect with and honour the ANZAC spirit, the Gallipoli Youth Cup will next week return to Melbourne for the first time since 2009.<\/p>\n
The ITF Junior Grade 4 tournament will be the first international event to be staged at the new clay courts at Melbourne Park\u2019s National Tennis Centre, and boasts a field featuring top local talent, 12 emerging Turkish players, and players from New Zealand, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, India, Hong Kong and Japan.<\/p>\n
Now in it\u2019s sixth year, the Gallipoli Youth Cup was established thanks to the vision of Aussie tennis legend Pat Cash and his friend Umit Oraloglu, a Turkish Australian.<\/p>\n
It aims to allow players the chance to commemorate the fallen soldiers at Gallipoli through sporting competition and participation, and unite young players from different national and cultural backgrounds in an historical context.<\/p>\n
Cash, who flew in from his base in London to attend Friday\u2019s media event at Melbourne Park, said he had always loved history when growing up, and was thrilled that the tournament was keeping the memory of World War I and the ANZACs alive.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs far as I know, there\u2019s never been any sporting event put together for the ANZAC nations or World War I. We have sporting events on ANZAC Day, but our idea was to get the nations together,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n
\u201cAustralia is a country that\u2019s open to everybody, and we\u2019re all from somewhere. We wanted to create and continue this tradition and have recognition of that.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of the tournament\u2019s main goals is to strengthen ties between Australia and Turkey nations, and it\u2019s definitely achieving its aim in 2013, with a large Turkish contingent set to grace the clay at Melbourne Park.<\/p>\n
The girls\u2019 event is headed by top seed Ipek Soylu, from Adana, Turkey and currently the world\u2019s 16th-ranked junior.<\/p>\n
Another player in the draw is Sera Yavuzcan, a 16-year-old Australian of Turkish descent and playing in her first ever ITF event.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m definitely really excited \u2026 to be surrounded by players in this environment is really amazing, I\u2019m really glad I\u2019m playing this week,\u201d Yavuzcan said.<\/p>\n
\u201c(The goal is) definitely to get experience. Because it\u2019s my first ITF tournament I\u2019m not planning to go too well, so if I do win or I do get games, it will definitely be a bonus.\u201d<\/p>\n
Coming in behind Soylu is second seed Zoe Hives, the Victorian player who recently won the 16s National Claycourt Championships at the very same Melbourne venue. The boys draw is headed by top seed New South Wales\u2019 Mitchell Pritchard and No.2 seed Daniel Guccione of Victoria.<\/p>\n
Last year\u2019s boys\u2019 and girls\u2019 events, staged at the George Adler Tennis Centre in Ipswich, Queensland, were won by Harry Bourchier and Ellen Perez.<\/p>\n
Perez was on hand at Friday\u2019s media event alongside Cash and Yavuzcan, and said the Gallipoli Youth Cup was an event she was very keen to be involved with.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously it\u2019s a great tournament,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s really good being able to play against all the Turkish players and players from other countries, and it\u2019s a good friendship to have with the other players here.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Gallipoli Youth Cup will kick off on Monday 22 April, beginning with two days of qualifying before the main draw action gets underway on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Cash said it was an important stepping stone in the careers of those playing this week at Melbourne Park.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese are the kinds of events that myself and every player you see today on the world tour have started at and worked their way through,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese events are absolutely crucial for these young hopefuls to try and make a living out of a very tough game.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Providing players with an international competitive opportunity while at the same time helping them connect with and honour the ANZAC spirit, the Gallipoli Youth Cup will next week return to Melbourne for the first time since 2009. The ITF Junior Grade 4 tournament will be the first international event to be staged at the new […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5907,"featured_media":10541,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5907"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}