New Zealand Open Championship 2000 - Report
September 30 - October 7 2000

Reported by TONY LEE
Junior/Youth Development Consultant

The New Zealand Open Championship was held at Christchuch from 30 September 2000 to 7 October 2000. WSTTA sent a team comprising of John Tawadrous, Michael Xia and Andrew Chak to participate in the tournament. The team was captained and managed by Tony Lee.

We entered our team in the U15 boys team event and came 2nd overall with John Tawadrous not dropping a set in the whole event. This was a good team achievement as one of our players has not even played in any open tournament before, let alone an international tournament.

The team event was then followed by the individual events where our players entered into various age events in singles and doubles. John Tawadrous, once again, displayed his class and determination by winning the U15, U17 & U21 singles, the U15 & U17 doubles and came second the U17 mixed doubles. Altogether he collected 5 Gold and 1 Silver medals under some very trying conditions as he was struggling with his form early in the tournament. The performance is more outstanding in that it has been over almost 15 years since an Australian has won a NZ junior national title. John must be the first Australian junior boy to pick up 5 Gold medals (including 3 individual singles titles) in one NZ National Championship.

Outstanding performances also come from Andrew Chak in winning the U15 Boys Singles (Division 3) and reaching the fourth round in the U17 Singles. Andrew also combined with Michael Xia to reach the quarter-final of the U17 doubles.

I am rather surprised by the NZ junior table tennis standards especially the playing standard of some of their younger girls. Obviously this is in part due to their better facilities and enthusiastic coaches. Even though NZ has a smaller population than Australia, they seem to make the most out of what they have and the standard of play by some of the juniors shows. It is also interesting and encouraging to see many of their junior players are from overseas backgrounds.

Once again I would like to thank the Christchurch people for organizing a wonderful tournament, their hospitality in arranging transport for our team and their kind and warm nature will be well remembered. The players enjoyed the trip enormously. They made many friends and vowed to come back to New Zealand next year. I hope we can be back with a bigger team next year.