THIS year’s Easter holiday weekend will mark the Myrtleford Lawn Tennis Club’s 36th Annual Easter Tennis Tournament, with an open invitation Australia-wide for participants to attend.
With some 62 junior and 309 senior visiting players already registered for this year’s matches, the town is set to see an influx of tennis-loving tourists along with the traditional Easter holiday traffic.
“We’ve had a huge response from people wanting to attend our Easter Tournament this year,” Myrtleford Tennis Club president, Peter Ternes said.
“When player entries opened on February 9, the senior places were booked out within the hour.
“The juniors’ entries only lasted three days before they were also booked out: it was our fastest registration ever.”
It’s not just the club looking foward to the town’s premiere annual sporting event.
Myrtleford Holiday Park adjoining the club said a large contingent of players were among the many hundreds of guest already booked in for Easter.
Matches will be held on the Myrtleford Lawn Tennis Club’s grass courts from 8am until dark across all four days, from Good Friday to Easter Monday.
Junior competitors are scheduled to play at the McNamara Reserve courts, on Good Friday, Easter Saturday and Easter Monday.
McNamara Reserve committee president, Bob McNamara, said thousands of people attend the popular event over the holiday weekend.
“The Easter Tournament is a really big event, and Easter weekend will be huge...there’ll be footy on the Sunday and tennis on Friday, Saturday and Monday, so everyone will be able to enjoy some great local sport.”
Myrtleford Chamber of Commerce president, Jim Van Geet, said the town will certainly benefit from the influx of tourist traffic over the Easter holiday weekend.
“Our busiest time of the year for tourism is always autumn,” he said.
“People come to our region to enjoy the weather changing and admire the new colours of leaves on the trees.
“We get buckets of tourists for the local Easter tennis tournament; that does bring in a lot of tourism to town.
“Local businesses will benefit from the extra tourism as we’ve seen before: during Easter, everything’s booked out.
“Also, the school holidays become longer because they are extended due to the Easer weekend this year.”
