Jose ‘Dodong’ Gullas (second from left) faces members of the Cebu media in a press conference in his office at the University of the Visayas campus. With him are (from left) organizer John Pages, tournament director Fritz Tabura and Norman Joseph Enriquez, a 3-time gold medalist in the recently concluded Philippine National Games. / Mars Alison
Jose ‘Dodong’ Gullas has been supporting the sport of tennis for a long time now.
For 23 years, Gullas has helped keep netters busy and competitive by holding the JRG Gullas Cup.
But for how long is he planning to continue with this tournament?
“Only God knows,” the 84-year-old Gullas said during a press conference for another edition of the netfest on June 1 to 5 in two different venues, the Citigreen Tennis Resort in Barangay Punta Princesa and the Alta Vista Golf and Country Club courts in barangay Pardo.
Gullas said he’d like to think he can continue with the tournament as long as he can but he’s not too sure, too, if this year could be the last. At the end of the day, he leaves everything to God.
For the meantime, this year’s edition pushes through with a record number of 259 players confirming their participation as of yesterday. The number is expected to increase with the deadline for registration set at noon today.
The increase is attributed to the tournament now being a Group 1-sanctioned event by the Unified Tennis Philippines (UTP).
In the previous years, the tournament has only attracted more than a hundred participants with last year’s number just five shy of 200.
According to organizer John Pages, this year has gathered many participants from Manila as compared to previous editions, wherein only a handful make the trip from the north for this tournament.
The northern bets include the eight players national coach Roland Kraut will be bringing here.
Tournament director Fritz Tabura said that they will make the draw this afternoon and games will start tomorrow morning.
The boys division will be played at the Citigreen Tennis Resort while the girls division will be at the tennis courts of the Alta Vista Golf and Country Club.
Being a Group 1 sanctioned event, champions in each age-group category will be getting 200 points to boost their current UTP rankings.
Categories will be 10-Under, 12-U, 14-U, 16-U and 18-U. Except for the 10 Under, which is unisex, the rest of the categories will have a boys and girls division.