The Ulster winter tennis season starts with the Junior open at the David Lloyd centre in Belfast. Juniors participating in this event are competing for points that will go towards next years rankings. Despite the distance to travel, the Enniskillen tennis club had an incredible 15 of their juniors playing this tournament. The under tens event saw the next generation of local players competing at a very high level with outstanding perfomances from them all. Kaelan Deery played in the under 9's. He came second in his round robin group, losing only to the boy who went on to win the event. He had a very close semifinal against rival Ace narrowly losing 10-9. Kaelan went on to play another match which he won well so he finished up in 3rd place. Rory Smyth and Aoibheann King competeted in the under 10's. Aoibheann played well against a group of boys just missing out on a spot in the semifinals. Rory made it to the semi final and in a closely fought match just lost out on getting to the final. Ciara Griffin made it to the semi finals of the under 14's and Sarah Cousins and Ronan McKeever made it to the semifinals of the under 18's. Sarah just lost out to the eventual winner in a very close 3 set match.

Enniskillen's Eimear Smyth was seeded number 1. She came into the draw at the semi final stage where she played qualifier Jessica Moore from Belfast who was in a good run of form having dropped only three games in her matches prior to the semifinal. Jessica started strongly taking the first set 6-3 but once Eimear started to get to grips with the indoor playing surface she took the second set 6-3 before winning the match after taking the deciding set 6-1.

In the final the Enniskillen teenager played No 2 seed Mary Parkash. A mammoth first game saw both girls play a series of long rallies before Eimear saw off a number of break points to hold serve and take the game. This seemed to give Eimear an edge as she took a 4-0 lead before her opponent, from Ballymena, broke Eimear's serve and then went on to force her way back into the set at 4-3 with Mary's passing shots in particular proving to be very effective. Eimear took a tense 8th game in the set breaking Mary's serve with a key point being won as Eimear took the initiative at the net with a couple of trademark volleys. Eimear held her own serve to take the first set 6-3

The second set went with serve but at 4-4 in what proved to be the crucial game in the match, she broke Mary's serve with some accurate backhand returns which put her 5-4 up. Eimear held her nerve to close the match out taking the second set 6-4.

Eimear's progress over the previous season has been remarkable and with valuable ranking points earned this week Eimear is in a very strong position for the coming months.

Head coach Matthew McGann is delighted with the amount of juniors that competed at this event and said that “seeing so many competing is a tribute to the tennis club that works so hard to support its juniors and the work that the under 10 coach Louise McGann puts into the next generation of players.”