Macleod foresees bright future
SIR Hamish Macleod, chairman of the Hong Kong Tennis Foundation, declared a bright future for Hong Kong tennis when he chaired the foundation's annual general meeting for the first time last night.
Financial Secretary Sir Hamish, who took over from the then Chief Secretary Sir David Ford as chairman last year, said the foundation was a financially healthy body and the territory could look forward to a ''great future''.
He said Hong Kong's success in the NTT World Junior Tennis where the territory finished 13th out of 80 nations in Japan recently was evidence of the territory's success.
The territory were narrowly beaten by the United States in the earlier rounds having qualified for the under-14 boys' tournament.
Sir Hamish said: ''We are very pleased with that success; we came very close to beating the United States and due credit must go to the Hong Kong Tennis Association and everybody who has worked hard. We can look forward to further successes.
''The focus now is on very young players where they will play mini-tennis producing a large base of players who will be pitched out with potential.'' Sir Hamish said another reason for Hong Kong's success was the expansion of facilities and that the sport had been introduced to schools where youngsters would be encouraged to play.
But Sir Hamish said it would be a long time before Hong Kong could be a force on the world tennis scene.
''It will take quite a long time to further progress to where we could have, say, the number three seed at Wimbledon. This takes fantastically hard work to do this. Let's bring up the general standard of our tennis first,'' he said.
The Foundation has in excess of $7 million at their disposal and Sir Hamish said the Foundation's healthy state was primarily due to two fund raising activities and the support from the Hong Kong Tennis Patrons' Association, who organised the highly successful Marlboro Championships.
Meanwhile, five members of the executive council of the Foundation were elected into office. They were Po Chung, Paul Cheng, F. K. Hu, Haider Barma and James So.
