Even going close to repeating their victory of last year is a big ask for the Wairarapa senior representative tennis team at the Jacob Creek quinrangular tournament being played at the Renouf Tennis Centre in Wellington this weekend. As selector Steve Hurley well knows Wairarapa caught their Wellington, Manawatu, Hutt Valleyand Kapiti rivals by surprise 12 months ago with the overall depth in their squad but that won't happen again. Hurley is anticipating the opposition taking nothing to chance this time round by fielding their strongest combinations when they play Wairarapa, and consequently victory will be harder to come by. That Wairarapa will still make a huge impact in the men's section where their playing order will be headed by Marcus Daniell, who has made such impressive progress in the professional ranks over the past 12 months, and Jono Hurley, who plays his club tennis in the Wellington region where he is a coaching professional for the Island Bay club is undoubted. Daniell and Hurley were grand value in both singles and doubles play in last year's event and nothing should change in that regard. And they can expect excellent support from two of the most consistent performers on the local club scene, Baden Stevenson and Luke Atkinson, along with Chris Schofield, Kelby Courtney and Geoff Janse. Question marks do exist, however, over the ability of Wairarapa to make quite the same impact in the women's section where the loss of former Central Districts representative Leanne Sweeney from last year's squad is sure to be felt. Katie Wyeth, Ashleigh Gane and Carla Didsbury will probably fill the first three sports in the singles order there with the other a toss up between Emma Stevenson, Natasha Robinson and juniors Sade Atkinson and Zoe Schofield. The more experienced Stevenson would normally be considered the obvious choice but she is yet to play at club level this season because of injury problems and therefore her involvement could be restricted to doubles play over the weekend. No regional one inter-club matches are being played in the Wairarapa this weekend because of the clash with the Jacob Creek tourney.
