You’d be forgiven if you were playing in the NWT Open at the Yellowknife Tennis Club last weekend and missed a shot or two thanks to the blasting happening around the new aquatic centre.
And there was the small addition of forest fire smoke.
Amidst all of that, 50 players from Yellowknife and Fort Smith were on court for the 38th edition of the territorial tennis championships.
Slavica Jovic with Tennis NWT said everything started on the evening of July 20 with the early round matches.
“We were lucky that the weather was good, so we were able to accommodate consolation matches on Saturday and Sunday and give participants another opportunity to play if they lost their first round matches,” she said.
Five divisions were in play over the course of the weekend: men’s and women’s singles, men’s and women’s doubles and mixed doubles and there were plenty of fine matches as the tournament got down to crunch time.
The women’s singles champion this year is Tamara Jovic and she overcame Mercy Mupedsizwa in the final, but Jovic was pushed all the way as it went all three sets in the best-of-three final. It’s the sixth women’s singles crown for Jovic.
The men’s singles wasn’t as exciting as Nikhilesh Gohil won over Darren Campbell by walkover.
Slavica Jovic said Campbell withdrew after playing four matches on Saturday and simply wasn’t able to make it for his two scheduled matches the following day.
Teresa Martin and Ofira Duru are your women’s doubles champions as they beat the duo of Hiro Kobayashi and Anita Aogaa in the decider. Campbell, though, was able to emerge victorious in the men’s doubles final with his partner, Alberto Valero. They managed to outlast the father-son tandem of Nittin and Nikhilesh Gohil in a three-set thriller; Campbell and Valero needed a tiebreak in the third set to win it all.
Tamara Jovic and Stephen Messier took the honours in mixed doubles after beating Aogaa and her partner, Alex Godfrey.