Year: 2008

It doesn’t matter if you play the sport or not. It’s unimportant if you’ve never swung a backhand in your life and only watch tennis and Rafael Nadal on Star Sports. What’s essential is this: This whole week until Sunday, you have a chance to witness a rare occurrence in Cebu. Who, where, what am I talking about?

RP’s best tennis stars. Live! Here in Cebu City. Joining the Cebuana Lhuillier Men’s Open.

Thanks to Jean Henri Lhuillier, an ace businessman with an unrivaled love for sports, we are witnesses to this major sports event. Jean Henri, the president of the Amateur Softball Association of the Philippines, is a former U.S. college Division-I varsity tennis player who continues to swing forehands until today. In fact, yesterday at 5:30 p.m. with partner Jun Toledo, he joined his own event and played doubles.

It’s starting today and finishing next Sunday. It’s one vs. one, two vs. two. There’s singles. Doubles. Fists will be pumped, arms raised, racquets thrown, shouts will echo the arena. There’ll be 36-year-olds competing against 15-year-olds with 82-year-olds applauding. It’s an event that Cebu has not witnessed in years. The last time? In Cebu City? A looooooong time ago. But today, tomorrow, Tuesday, and onwards until May 11, in full display will be yellow balls and white clouds and red racquets and brown clay.

She’s a Cebuana. She is not a singer or a sexy temptress. She, in fact, is a business, a company—and one of the largest in it’s industry.

She is Cebuana Lhuillier. And for the next eight days, Cebuanos will get a chance to sit fascinated, stand spellbound and clap riveted to an event that’s a long time coming: the top men’s tennis players fighting in Cebu to see who’s tops in the Philippines.

All racquets and yellow balls lead to Casino Espanol de Cebu tomorrow when the biggest clinic in Cebu tennis aces off. Last year at the Cebu Country Club, nearly 200 children and adults joined. This year? Since no charges will be assessed the participants—yes, let me repeat that: This is a free tennis clinic—then I expect just as many, if not more, to swing volleys and smother lobs with smashes.

Butch Bacani, as I’ve written on this box last year and last week, is one of the top tennis coaches of our 7,107 islands. He is smart (a U.P. Economics graduate who ventured into the corporate world before he turned full-time into tennis). He is rich in experience (a former Davis Cup captain, he’s trained in America, Australia and many other countries around the globe). He is, best of all, dedicated and passionate. I saw with my own eyes how he spent days and hours and weeks under the scorching, burning summer heat from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., teaching, imparting the ABCs of Maria Sharapova’s game, motivating little kindergarten students as young as five to grip a racquet and swing the fluffy ball.

Now that the clay-court season has started, all eyes are on one player—and he’s not named Roger Federer. He’s Rafael Nadal. The “King of Clay,” Nadal has three straight French Open trophies at home. And Roger? Well, we know he’s been losing and, thus far, hasn’t won a title in 2008. And the clay-court—which slows the ball and isn’t favorable to an aggressor like Federer—isn’t the world no.1’s strength. But he’s done the right thing this week. He’s hired a coach: Jose Higueras, the former mentor of Jim Courier, Michael Chang and Pete Sampras. (Read the short ESPN story here.)

Next week, one of the nation’s top tennis coaches will descend in Cebu. No, he won’t be here for a mere three hours or three days or three weeks—Butch Bacani will reside in Cebu for one month. At the Casino Español de Cebu along V. Ranudo St., Bacani will train children as young as five years old, he’ll hone the skills of top juniors like Niño Siso, and he’ll impart his decades-long experience to anyone dreaming to be a future Roger Federer.