Tennis Ireland can benefit from pushing Georgian's cause

On Tennis:Leila Kukhalashvili is currently living in Ballyhaunis, Co Mayo, and hoping some day she can settle down in Ireland. Leila is from the former Soviet Union state of Georgia, which is considered by many as a dangerous and unstable place to live.

She is in the process of seeking refugee status for herself and her family. While the authorities dealing with the application may or may not be influenced in their determination of her status by the sporting prowess of Leila and her children, their backgrounds are at least interesting and could be of benefit to the "global" Ireland in the future.

Leila was a 1,500 metre and 800 metre champion runner for Georgia and the former Soviet Union and held junior and senior records for those distances throughout her career. "Some of those records," she says "lasted for 17 years."

Her partner and her son, Lazare, are currently in Georgia. Lazare has struggled to get visas from Georgia, which would allow him to travel around the world and chase his own dreams of being a top-class tennis player. Lazare, who will be 17 years old next February, had a junior ranking of 37 in the world at the beginning of this year, one that has plummeted to 143 following six months of travelling difficulties and anxiety about his future. Like his mother, he would also like to become a citizen of Ireland.

Last year when he wanted to travel to the US for the Junior US Open authorities declined to give him a visa to travel. This year he was again denied. Again no visa forthcoming and no reasons given. He can travel around Europe on an Schengen visa, which is a special document accepted by a collection of European countries, but his ability to concentrate on his tennis career in a global sense has been greatly curtailed.

For a player who is clearly seen as a hot-world prospect Lazare is slipping off the radar. He has already been signed up by the global marketing group International Management Group (IMG) and has been courted by both the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) and the United States Tennis Association (USTA).

Lazare's talent was spotted early in his career and, having left Georgia for the Ukraine in 1999, he won a scholarship to the world-acclaimed Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy in Florida. He went on to win the Orange Bowl for under-12 players. The Orange Bowl is the final grade A tennis tournament of the year held in Florida. It is also, arguably, the most prestigious.

Prior to going back to Georgia recently, Lazare was living in London at the invitation of the LTA, which because of the huge commercial success of Wimbledon each year, is the wealthiest tennis federation in the world with some £25 million going into its books annually. But they seemed to have let him slip off the leash.

"In 2005 he went to Georgia for a new visa," says his mother, Leila. "Then the problems started. A visa was denied many times. A student visa was denied in June of this year and a visa to play in the junior US Open was denied. I've asked many times for help from my federation. But no help.

"I am happy here now. It is a safe place. This place is a good place. It would great to be a resident here," she says, adding, "His (Lazare) ranking is going down because he can't make the tournaments. His ranking is very bad."

Tennis Ireland (TI), who has no junior players close to his level, has formally become involved in the process and has written a letter that may not help but certainly won't hurt the red-tape issues. As they have done for Mariana Levova, who is a Bulgarian national, a talented tennis player and also resident here, TI have embraced the concept that this is a different Ireland to the one of even 10 years ago. Montreal-born Greg Rusedski played under the British flag for many years. Mary Pierce played for Canada and then for France. Martina Navratilova was Czech and became a US national, while Monica Seles was born in Serbia and played for Yugoslavia before lining out for the USA Federation Cup team.

If Leila and Lazare achieve what they are aiming for in their application for Irish citizenship, Ireland would not be the first country to benefit from the less restrictive definitions of what that means. The possibility is that in a few years from now, the Irish men's team could have a Georgian-born player on the Davis Cup side and the women's side a Bulgarian-born player on the Federation Cup team.

All in all, appropriately new Ireland.