Ireland plump for young team

TENNIS NEWS:IRELAND WILL send one of its youngest teams ever to compete at the BNP Paribas Federation Cup in Cairo, Egypt next month.

The team, consisting of Julia Moriarty, Amy Bowtell, Jenny Claffey and Lynsey McCullough, will compete in the Europe/Africa Zone Group III division of the competition, which runs from Monday, April 19th until Saturday, April 24th at the appropriately named Smash Tennis Academy in Cairo.

The oldest player on the Ireland squad, Julia Moriarty, is 21, making it one of the youngest teams to compete in the tournament. Moriarty is a newcomer to the Ireland set-up. She was born in Adelaide, Australia, holds dual-citizenship and is ranked 695th in the world in the WTA rankings. She has been deemed eligible by the ITF to represent Ireland in this competition.

Ireland’s number two player is St Andrew’s College schoolgirl Amy Bowtell, who is the youngest member on the team at 16.

Bowtell has been a successful member of the BNP Paribas National Tennis Academy Junior Squad since 2001, reaching the finals of the Ladies National Indoors event at Riverview at Christmas. Partners at last year’s Federation Cup in Malta, Claffey and McCullough, make up the rest of the team.

The competition will have a round-robin style format, with two pools of five teams. The other nations making up the Europe/Africa Zone Group III are: Algeria, Angola, Egypt, Iceland, Malta, Moldova, Morocco, Namibia and Turkey.

The winners of each pool will play against the number two teams in the other group to determine which two nations will advance to the Europe Africa Zone Group II in 2011. All of the remaining nations’ play will determine the final positions within the group.