The fun matches and awarding ceremony on 28th January 2016 marked the end of Season One of the Shanghai Racquet Club (SRC) Women’s Charity League. The awarding ceremony was a culmination of thirteen weeks of fun yet competitive tennis matches involving 42 ladies from countries spanning the globe, ranging from Finland, Brazil, India, Australia, China, Korea and Hong Kong to name just a few.
The ladies all came together for a good cause: to support You Dao Foundation to provide educational opportunities for children from migrant families.
On this final day, the ladies were divided into two pools, and randomly paired up for their first ten-point super tiebreak game at the six indoor tennis courts. The winning pair moved up the ladder, whilst the losing pair went down. Then, each pair had to split up to team up with a different lady of the same rank within the ladder and another super tiebreak game was played. There was a catch however, and strategy involved as each player had a secret weapon: a booklet of 5 coupons for 50 yuan, where each coupon would award them one point in the super-tiebreak game, bringing them one step closer to winning the match. The games continued under this format, until the two ladies from each pool who won the most games were crowned champions at the end of the two-hour mix and match games. During lunch at the SRC clubhouse, a 100 yuan donation was collected from each participant in the league. There was also a silent auction of donated tennis artwork, and purchases of calligrapher Josephine Yue’s auspicious Chinese New Year couplets to welcome the Year of the Monkey.
This would not have been possible without the organizers who worked tirelessly behind the scenes to ensure an exciting and fun tennis season for all involved, and a special thank you to Fusion Tennis and Shanghai Racquet Club for supporting such a worthy cause.