Mumbai: Newly-crowned US Open women’s champion Flavia Pennetta and Martina Hingis will be part of the Champions Tennis League this season. Italian Pennetta, who won her maiden Grand Slam singles title in New York, will play for Mumbai Masters while her former doubles partner Hingis was retained by the Hyderabad Aces.
Swiss tennis ace Hingis who had finished second with Pennetta last year in New York went on to win the doubles title this year with Hyderabad’s tennis queen Sania Mirza.
The second edition of the CTL, the brainchild of former Indian Davis Cup captain Vijay Amritraj, will see 13 matches played over a two-week period from November 23 to December 6 in a home and away format with six teams split into two groups.
Five city-based franchises — Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chandigarh and new entrants Raipur and Nagpur — have been identified and the sixth (Team 6) will be announced soon.
Croatian big-server Ivo Karlovic will play for Hyderabad. Other Indian players in the fray are Saketh Myneni (Punjab Marshalls), Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan (Hyderabad Aces), Sriram Balaji (Mumbai Masters), Divij Sharan (Nagpur Team), Ramkumar Rama-nathan (Raipur Team) and Vishnu Vardhan (Team 6).
The teams:
