Centralian Advocate, Friday, September 28, 2012 — 55

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ALICE SPRINGSNOWRECRUITING

Umps walk the lineWarren

Thomson

Leanne Usher and GaryBigg are going to the2013 Australian Open asline umpires

Picture: CHLOE GERAGHTY

LOCAL tennis umpiresLeanne Usher and Gary Biggwill get up close with theworld’s best tennis playerswhen they line up to umpireat the 2013 Australian Open.

Usher has also been selec-ted to line umpire at theBrisbane International,which is a lead-up tourna-ment to the Australian Open.

Bigg says he can’t wait toofficiate in the Grand Slamtournament, which is on inJanuary 2013.

‘‘I’m very excited andhappy to be going there,’’ hesaid.

‘‘It was awesome at therecent professional tourna-

ment here in Alice Springs,on the lines against thefastest serve in the world,and we are looking forwardto more of that.’’

Bigg and Usher have hadtwo and one years’ experi-ence respectively, and Ushersaid the Australian Openwasn’t on their radar whenthey started officiating.

‘‘Certainly not initially, butwe were led to believe that weare doing a pretty good job sowe should aim high, and wehave done that,’’ she said.

‘‘You get to be close to theaction and, in the recentAlice Springs professionaltournament, we had SamGroth serving the world’sfastest serves towards us andwe had Luke Saville, who is ajunior Wimbledon champ-ion, here as well.’’

Bigg said they both gotinvolved to help out the localtennis community and tohelp keep the Alice SpringsInternational here.

In the recent Alice Springs

International, all but one ofthe line umpires were locals.

‘‘We only volunteered to beline umpires to help the localtennis community obtain aprofessional tournamentand it’s grown from there,and the referees that came tothe tournament said we tookto it like a duck to water, sowe’re really enjoying it.

‘‘Becoming line umpiressaves the cost of flying inter-state line umpires for TennisAustralia and helps us retaina professional tournament.’’

After being selected to lineumpire Australia’s biggesttournament, Usher said theywanted to move up to the

chair umpiring ranks.

‘‘In the chair we want to goeven further. We are allowedto chair umpire AustralianMoney Tournaments, whichis a step-up already fromwhere we were,’’ she said.

Bigg and Usher thank thelocal coaches as well as Ten-nis NT for their support.

‘‘Thanks to Matt (Roberts)and previous coaches whohave encouraged us to godown this line, and TennisNT in Darwin, Mark Peadand Di McDonald, who havegiven us a lot of support,’’Bigg said.

GreatdepthTENNIS

Warren Thomson

STRONG fields havebeen announced for theAlice Springs Open forthe AMT (AustralianMoney Tournament)Silver tournament.

There are 23 in themen’s field and 17 in thewomen’s field, and itfeatures a lot of qualityinterstate players aswell as Alice Springs’semerging stars.

Tennis Alice Springsmanager Matt Robertscan’t wait for the tour-nament to begin nextThursday.

‘‘The tournament isan important steppingstone for those who arebattling for higherranks to play for Aust-ralian Open qualifyingand to play in theDecember Showdown,’’he said.

Roberts said threey o u n g i n t e r s t a t eplayers would be ones towatch during the men’stournament.

‘‘Ethan Coker hasdone a lot with GeorgeShepheard and they’veplayed a lot of tennistogether.

‘‘Ethan is the highest-ranked player at theAlice Springs Open infive years, so he’s highlycredentialled,’’ he said.

There are also a lot ofplayers in the women’sfield who have a goodchance of snappingup the title.

‘‘There is incredibledepth in the women’sfield,’’ Roberts said.

‘‘We had a dark horsei n R u s s i a ’ s Y a n aMogilnitskaya who tookout last year’s tourna-ment, and this year wehave Kataraina Huniafrom New Zealand, whocould be the dark horsein this year’s tourna-ment.’’

Alice Springs playersJake Johan, NickWhyte, KatherineCampbell and Bonnieand Melanie Usher arehoping to keep the win-ner’s trophy in town.

More than 120 playershave registered for thetournament.