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Fresh from her maiden Grand Slam win at the US Open, Flavia Pennetta will be seen in action at the second edition of the Champions Tennis League in November. She will be part of the Mumbai Masters team.
Giving Pennetta company will be another Grand Slam winner - Martina Hingis who will be a part of Hyderabad Aces squad.
The second season of the Champions Tennis League was announced by India Tennis Legend Vijay Amritraj in a press conference in Mumbai on Wednesday, 23rd September 2015. The announcement saw the unveiling of two new teams from the cities of Raipur and Nagpur which will seeing world class tennis action for the first time.
The launch was followed by the player's draft for season two, which saw the formulation of the teams for the upcoming season.
CTL Season Two will continue to feature six teams like season one, with newcomers Raipur and Nagpur adding onto Mumbai, Chandigarh and Hyderabad who have decided to continue from last season.
The base city or the venue for the sixth will be announced in due course. The season two of CTL will be played over a two week period from November 23rd 2015 to December 6th 2015 in a home away format with the teams structured in two groups of three teams each.
The team winning the most number of games in the group will progress to the grand finale, the winner of which will win a prize money worth Rs. 1 crore, while the runner-up will walk away with Rs. 50 lakhs.
Each team will be led by a legendary player, who has won or been a part of a Grand Slam final inthe past. and will have other top international players under him along with a notable national player and a junior Indian boy and a girl to formulate the team.
Building on the success of season one, season two looks to be better and bigger not just in terms of the duration, but also in terms of quality according to the founder of the CTL Vijay Amritraj.
“I am glad to announce the second season of the CTL. This season we are determined to make it bigger and better and hence have worked on the fallings of last season and have come up with a slightly altered model which is suitable for everyone involved in CTL, including our viewers”, said the legendary Indian tennis star”, said the Indian tennis legend.
The most notable change in the format is that the set will be played till the 5th game unlike six in the regular format. The tie breaker will also be a lot tighter and will be out of nine points instead of the regular twelve. “We had a problem with the broadcasting of the league as many games exceeded the expected time duration and the concluding parts of the game often had to be sacrificed.
Hence to avoid losing out on the most interesting parts of the game, we have made the game a lot tighter, which will automatically add a bit more spice to it”, added Amritraj.
In the draft which followed the announcement of the new season, Hyderabad and Mumbai seemed to have earned the edge over the others with the Mumbai Tennis Masters getting their hands on the current Women’s US Open Champion Flavia Pennetta, while Hyderabad added Ivo Karlovic to their squad having already captured Martina Hingis before the draft.
Season One's Player of the Tournament, Marcos Baghdatis was the first player to be picked in the draft, as Punjab wasted no time in snapping up the Cypriot first up. Saketh Myneni was the first Indian player to be picked as Punjab enjoyed the luck of draw once again after getting the first right to pick the player in the odd numbered rounds.
Former world No.1 Jelena Jankovic was newcomers Nagpur’s first pick before adding Luciano Lopez and Alex Corretja as their captain. All the teams looked fairly satisfied with the teams at the end of the draft and looked determined to make a mark in the CTL 2015.
Bharat Oza, the Secretary of the All India Tennis Association (AITA), hailed the CTL as a great initiative to take Indian tennis to the next level while its pledging support to the league. “I would like to congratulate Vijay and his team for creating such a wonderful league for Indian tennis.
The CTL is a great exposure for the Indian players who will get a chance to interact and learn from some of the top tennis players in the world. The AITA offers complete support to the CTL and hope season two is a grand success”, said Bharat Oza, who is also the President of the Maharashtra Lawn Tennis Association.
