Image: Supplied
Cradock will fly the Eastern Province flag when they compete in the Growthpoint Top Guns national club tennis finals at Sun City this weekend.
The Karoo team have won the EP regional leg two years in a row and will be hoping to extend that success to a national level over the next four days.
A total of 16 regional tennis clubs will contest the finals from Friday to Monday.
Sun City offers 11 worldclass hard outdoor-surface courts, of which eight will be used, with five equipped with floodlights.
There will be three practice facilities from the three courts that will not be used for matches – all of them with a backdrop of the Pilanesburg mountains and with the famous Gary Player golf course nearby.
“For Sun City to host such a top-class SA tennis event is an incredible honour and a feather in our cap as one of the top destinations in the country,” tournament co-ordinator Pieter Hoeksma said.
“I can proudly say that we have ticked all of the operational and logistics boxes ahead of the tournament.
“We thank Growthpoint and Tennis South Africa for bringing this event to us.
“We have always looked at opportunities of how we can sustain tennis interest in the region,” he said.
The opening ceremony will be hosted at the South African Hall of Fame, a facility with a rich history of the country’s sporting achievement on the eve of the tournament.
“The history of South African sports that includes achievements of the likes of Gary Player and the Bafana Bafana team that won the 1996 Africa Cup of Nations rests here,” Hoeksma said.
“This, we felt, was the perfect location to start off proceedings and to experience a critical piece of this country’s history that was officially launched three years ago.”
The Top Guns is a doubles team format with two men and two women making up a team.
The winners earn R30,000 for their club, as well as a further R30,000 that is divided among the players.
The losing finalists will take home R10,000 for their club and R10,000 divided among the players.