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   The future stars of women’s tennis thrilled crowds at the Al Habtoor Tennis Challenge at the Metropolitan Resort and Beach Club in April, with the International Tennis Federation tournament attracting 112 talented players from 27 countries in competition for the $75,000 prize money.

   The tournament was launched five years ago by the Chairman of the Al Habtoor Group, Mr. Khalaf Al Habtoor, and continues to attract increasingly better players. Top seeds this year were Tatiana Poutchek from Belarus, who has a WTA ranking of 80, followed by Seda Noorlander of Holland (ranked 91) through to Bahis Mouhtassine from Morroco with her career high ranking of 143.

   But it was reigning Junior Wimbledon champion Angelique Widjaja, from Indonesia, who stole the show by outslugging Japan's Shinobu Asagoe 7-5, 6-2 in the final to add the impressive Al Habtoor Tennis Challenge crystal trophy to her growing collection.

   The tournament is recognised as a staging post for rising young stars and has helped produce a number of world-class players. Jelena Dokic of Yugoslavia participated in 1998 as a junior exempt and is now ranked No. 7 in the world, while in 1999 Mr. Al Habtoor noticed the talents of a young Muslim girl, Iroda Tulyaganova from Uzbekistan, and gave her a ‘wild card’ to compete in the tournament as a non-ranked player. Today, Iroda is world No. 16.

   Similarly, Eleni Daniliidou of Greece was given a ‘wild card’ entry last year and went on to win the tournament. She went on to advance to the third round at Roland Garos and Wimbledon and is now rising in the WTA rankings.

   “No matter how much you practice, it’s the tournaments and the competitions which create top players,” Mr. Al Habtoor said. “But it is not only tennis that we care about. We hope the players go back home and say to their friends and relatives: ‘You must see Dubai’.”

   Widjaja is very much a star in the making and cruised steadily through the five rounds of this year’s tournament to capture the magnificent crystal trophy.

   The 90-minute final was fought chiefly from the baseline with Widjaja showing more initiative than her Japanese rival. The first set saw defensive play by both players as a near-packed crowd enjoyed the baseline exchanges in the first-ever all-Asian final.

   "Since it was a title match there was a lot of pressure and we both played a bit defensively," Widjaja said after her triumph.

   There were seven service breaks in the 52-minute-long first set. Widjaja, who committed two doubles faults, was broken in the first game even as she saved five break points in the game, which went to four deuces.

   Widjaja is a late starter and, as she confesses, likes to measure her rival in the first round, even at the cost of losing. But once she found her rhythm and got the measure of Asagoe, she broke back in the sixth game, only to be broken in the seventh. Then followed a sequence of breaks until the 10th game. Widjaja held her service in the 11th after saving two break points and then broke Asagoe in the 12th to take the first set 7-5.

   The baseline slugfest was even until the fourth game in the 36-minute second set. Then Widjaja won four games in a row to wrap up the match, with Asagoe double-faulting in the eighth and last game of the final.

   Another promising young star of the tournament was Galina Fokina of Russia who caused an upset in the very first match by beating top seed Poutchek. The 17 year-old, who is ranked 189 in the world, relied on solid ground strokes to go one stage further by defeating Patricia Wartusch of Austria in the second round before falling to Olga Barabanschikova of Belarus in the quarter finals.

   Many spectators had high hopes for the young Hungarian ace Aniko Kapros, another former Grand Slam Junior Champion who finished 2nd in the World Junior Rankings. Aniko, who was runner-up last year, performed very well in her opening match before a shocking performance in the 2nd round saw her lose to beaten finalist Asagoe of Japan.

   Sheikh Hasher Al Maktoum, Director of the Dubai Department of Information and President of Tennis Emirates, presented the prizes, while guest of honour was Melvin Rose from Australia.

   Mr. Rose, who entered the tennis Hall of Fame by winning four Davis Cups for Australia and seven Grand Slams during a prolific career, also conducted training clinics with ladies, veteran players and the UAE national squad during the tournament, as well as a Kids Clinic, organised in cooperation with the UAE Tennis Association, which involved some 95 children aged between five and 12.