Dumfries and Galloway Tennis will be running what is believed to be the first Mini Red Tour in the area. The Mini Red Tour is a pilot event for 2016 and a great opportunity for players 8 and under (born on or after 1 April 2007) to take their coaching and get some competitive experience under their belts without having to travel too far, improve their ratings and hopefully have lots of great fun playing a wonderful sport that is hoped they will play for many years to come. These events will be open to any child living in Dumfries and Galloway.

The tour will consists of 3 competitions at Dumfries on Sunday January 31^st – 2pm to 4pm, Annan on Saturday February 20^th – 1pm to 4pm and at Moffat on Sunday March 20^th – 2pm to 5pm.

Each event has the same draw format (round robin groups) followed by knockout matches with group winners and second places going through to the main draw and group losers going into the consolation event (subject to numbers and interest). They will be looking to run both girls and boys events at each venue with both having their own leaderboard.

Individual performance at each venue is rewarded with points ranging from 100 for winning the event to 5 for losing in the first round of the consolation. These points are accumulated over the 3 events and the top boy and girl will receive a trophy each. There will also be medals awarded at each event for the top 3 players in each category.

The leaderboards will be updated  with reports being regularly posted on D&G Tennis website as well as the local papers.

The main priority of these events is the enjoyment, improvement and they don’t have to play in every event ALTHOUGH 50 BONUS POINTS WILL BE AWARDED TO THOSE DOING ALL 3 EVENTS.

To enter an event or all events, simple email  tennis@dumfriessportsclub.co.uk and request an entry form.

The tennis calendar for 2016 has now been updated and can be viewed the relevant start dates of each event under that “tab”.

Next year D&G Tennis are running a pilot mini red tour (8yrs and under), this will consist of 3 events held at Dumfries in January at the Loreburn Hall, Annan in February at the high school with the final one at the Beechgrove sports centre (tbc) in Moffat and this will be in March. These events are the starting point for kids playing tennis at the entry level with the hope that they will progress to junior players through time. These 3 clubs have been selected to run these events as they all still have active junior coaching programmes running throughout the winter.

If successful, we would be looking to expand this to a 5 or 6 event tour next winter, if other clubs are interested in joining the tour.

Orange and Green events are being looked at for a summer program so watch this space for more details.