Today, the Tennis Federation of Turkmenistan (TFT) celebrates its 30th anniversary, reports “Turkmenistan: Golden Age” website.
This public sports organization was officially registered on the 14th of April 1992 and from those time become a strong organizer engaged in the development and popularization of tennis in Turkmenistan.
To what extent the conditions for practicing this popular sport in the world have changed in Turkmenistan, it is enough to look into history.
Tennis in Turkmenistan, as a sport, began to be cultivated in the early 1950s and almost simultaneously in Ashgabat, Mary and Chardzhou (now Turkmanabat). Then a small number of people were engaged in it, and the competitions were held on asphalt surfaces.
Elena Domnina became the first state tennis coach in Turkmenistan. Mary sports school, where she worked all her professional life, gave a ticket to the big sport to many famous athletes. Subsequently, many of E.Domnina's students became leading athletes of Turkmenistan. Among them are Yazgeldy Byashimov, Larisa Kulakova, Georgy Bartnovsky, Valentina Alekseeva, Olga Chistyakova, Sergey Osipyan and many others.
With the independence of Turkmenistan, the material and technical base of sports has significantly strengthened. A large numbers of modern tennis courts have been built in all corners of the country, corresponding all international standards.
Since 1997, the TFT has been an associate member, and since 2003 — a full member of the International Tennis Federation (ITF), which now unites 145 national organizations with the status of full members and 60 associate members.
After entering into the ITF, Turkmen sportsmen received a right to compete as an independent team in manifold international tennis competitions and won medals there. During the years of state independence, the number of qualified trainers has also increased. To this date the total number of certified trainers in Turkmenistan reaches 40 specialists, 30 of them has international ITF trainer certificates. The number of sportsmen for the years of independence also grew and currently there are more than 1500.
The Tennis Federation of Turkmenistan has their own official website where all relevant information on TFT work is shown. Here the readers also can get acquainted with the news from tennis world as well as the data on location of sports bases where today you can practice this sport.
In 2018, the new Board of the TFT started their work, which conducted a range of effective measures to train the coaching staff and management, organization of competition process, use the internet and website maintenance, strengthened ties with the ITF and generally increased the international authority of the national federation. Evidence of this was the visit in 2019 of two-time Davis Cup winner in the Russian national team, winner of 19 APR tournaments Mihail Yuzhny with a master class in Turkmenistan.
The TFT representatives from 2020 are the members of several international ITF committees including a working group on conduction of group men’s and women’s worldwide famous competitions - the Davis Cup and the Billie Jean King Cup.
