VII Charity Tennis Tournament Play4Life Open...

10 September 2011

On September 10, the Play4Life Open 2011 charity tennis tournament was held on the central court of Baganashila, organized by the Play4Life initiative group in partnership with the Rotary Club of Almaty.

The tournament was attended by 30 amateur players, top managers from international and local companies, such as Omega Chemicals, Resmi Group, USAID, Centras Insurance, HSBC, Limpopo, Samruk-Kazyna Finance, Elsi Tech and others. The organizers were supported by a team of volunteers from the youth organization Rotaract. The tournament was sponsored by HSBC, Alatau insurance, RG Brands with the ASU trademark, KLM Airlines, The Tian Shan Group, Argento restaurant, Ciao Pizza, Italian beauty salon Aldo Copola, Sultan restaurant and Henkel. Also, many individuals contributed to this project.

The Support Group welcomed the participants to the morning opening ceremony. Representatives of the Play4Life initiative group Yerlan Balgarin and Elena Tsoy, President of the Rotary Club of Almaty Martin Kwerk and Director of the Kazakhstan Tennis Federation Marat Baimukhamedov made a welcoming speech. Famous Kazakhstani tennis player Zarina Diaz, a finalist of the Kremlin Cup 2010, came to the tournament to support this wonderful idea. She noted that the organization of charity tournaments abroad is a regular tradition; In Kazakhstan, the Play4Life Open was the first such tournament she had heard of, and she was happy to support the idea in her country.

All participants, despite the fact that they are non-professional players, showed a high level of play. Talgat Norembayev took the third place, Alexander Tsoy – the second, and the winner of the tournament was Dmitry Dmitriev, who received a business class ticket to anywhere in the world from KLM. Dmitry is an annual participant of the Play4Life Open tournaments  , and for the first time he received the title of absolute champion.

All funds raised during the tournament, including contributions, corporate sponsorship and individual contributions, will be used to purchase frames and windows for an orphanage in the village of Karakastek.