Nobody can take away my crown, says Babalola

Nigeria's number two tennis star, Abdulmumini Babalola, who is the top seed in this year's edition of the CBN Open Tennis Championship, is the player everybody wants to beat. But the Davis Cup player sees no opposition on his way to winning the coveted trophy, despite ‘the presence of so many ambitious youngsters in this competition."

  Rather than fret over the opposition in the competition, Babalola is happy that a lot of young players are coming up from the junior ranks, "a development that shows that Nigeria has a bright future in tennis.

 He says, "No matter the level of the competition I always try to prove my worth. I have been doing it for sometime now and I think will do it again with God on my side. "There are a lot of young players, who want to give the senior players a run for their money, and I want these younger players to come out without fear to challenge for the crown. That would show that we are growing in the game.

  "This is not an international competition. It is for Nigerian players to test their might and for anybody to win the tournament, he must be at his best."  Babalola sees the increased prize money as the fillip the players need to put up spectacular showing in the competition, saying, "with hard work some of these boys can ruffle some feathers."

On the CBN Open as the ideal preparation for the Davis Cup tie against Ukraine and the All Africa Games, Babalola says that the competition is not enough to judge the progress of the country's players after the loss to Poland. According to the Babalola, Nigerian players still needed to go out to challenge from other countries because "that is the only way w can test our progress
in the game.

  "Right now, all eyes are on me, Shehu Lawal, Destiny Da Silva and Candy Idoko because we are the players billed to represent the country in these coming international competitions. We know each other very well and I cannot see this competition as the best place to gauge our strength.

  "The CBN, though, is still part of the preparation because it will keep us in shape before we move out to bigger competitions like the Futures and Challenges. Those are the competitions can aptly tell us how ready we are for the Davis Cup and the All Africa Games.

 "I want to say that most of the players are already defeated before they play me because they go into the matches very scared already. But if the federation can take us out to play against Europeans and Americans it will help us a lot," he said. On Nigeria's failure against Poland in the Davis Cup, Babalola blamed the former Secretary-General of the Nigeria Tennis Federation (NCF), Opeyemi Aminu, whom he accused of disorganising the team before the tie against the Eastern Europeans.

 "We were already disorganised before the tie because the secretary general caused a lot of confusion in our camp. There was a lot of misunderstanding among us, but I am happy that we have learnt a valuable lesson from that defeat. "Could you believe that while we were preparing for such a big challenge, we lacked balls, shuttles and strings and the basic training equipment. Since I have been in camp, I have only received two balls, but I have repaired my racquet up to 30 times on my own expense. "I have to do all these things because tennis is the only place I earn my money and I wait for them to do it for me, I will not make any headway.

  "Right now, we are very happy that he is no longer with us and I want to advise the secretary-general to learn from the past and create a conducive atmosphere for the team. We are playing against Ukraine towards the end of July and I hope they will put everything together before then," he said.

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