KUWAIT: (From left) Faleh Al-Otaibi, Ibrahim Al-Khulaifi, Abdelraouf Abdelsalam, Abdelsamad Al-Aryan, Ahmad Al-Hajari and Ali Al-Mutairi are pictured during a press conference yesterday.

By Abdellatif Sharaa

KUWAIT: Preliminaries of the Arab Masters Tennis Tournament will start today at the Sheikh Jaber Al-Abdallah Al-Jaber Al-Sabah International Tennis complex courts. The draw for the single matches took place yesterday at Kuwait Tennis Federation premises in the presence of Deputy Chairman of the Board Abdelsamad Al-Aryan, Secretary General and Tournament Director Faleh Al-Otaibi, member of the Board of Arab Tennis Federation Ahmad Al-Hajari from Oman and head of Qatar delegation Ibrahim Al-Khulaifi. The draw was held under the supervision of tournament referee Abdelraouf Abdelsalam.

The tournament will be the best of three sets, and all three will have a tie break - while the doubles will be in two sets and in case of a tie, a 10 point tie break will be enforced. The draw had Oman's Abdalla Al-Barwani facing Syria's Rabei Sleem; Somalia's Zakaria Aweis facing Mauritania's Mohamed Said; Oman's Muneer Alrawahi facing Saudi Arabia's Sulaiman Al-Qasem; Lebanon's Hassan Ibrahim facing Libya's Ahmad Mouhan and Somalia's Mahdi Ahmad facing Jordan's Seif Adas.

Sulaiman Al-Qasem

The winners of the preliminaries will join the main draw, while Kuwait players will start their competitions in the main draw of the Arab Masters. Essa Qabazard will play Algeria's Toufik Sahtali, while Abdulhameed Joma will wait for the winner of Alrawahi and Al-Qasem's match. Bader Antar will face Jordan's Mousa AlKotop; Talal Antar will face Libya's Mohamed Al-Mehdi and Ali Al-Shatti will face Egypt's Amr Mohamed.

Saudi player Sulaiman Al-Qasem lauded the organizers of the Masters tournament. "We hope the tournament will see high technical standards. Such tournament will always strengthen brotherly relations between participants. Sheikh Jaber Al-Abdallah Al-Jaber Al-Sabah International Tennis Complex is state-of-the-art and will be an important destination for the best players of the world in few years," he said.