ers because the friend-ship really consolidated has turned into affection, the pleasure of being together, meeting again the same people and finding the same situa-tions by now family, has been the real spring that urges us to organize our holidays or part of them in relation of this annual meeting.

The spirit of the tourna-ment is since from the beginning a meeting of Rotarian friends, but at the end of the week, when we greet each other we feel really over-whelmed with the regret of not meeting again every moment of the day to comment on this or that fifteen lost or found, that lost game for a pit-tance or even gestures and expressions of dif-ferent humanity.

Giancarlo and Marcia Ciuffreda (RC Foggia Capitanata) had to really

At the end of our World Championship Tennis I am here again, just like the last years, writing about my impressions and feel-ings with the fear of saying again what I have already told in the past, but with the same state of mind and the same passion for this Rotarian tennis meeting, which isn’t competitive, but open to all who share their passion for tennis both veterans and begin-ners.

The charm of this annual meeting urges every year new Rotarians and their wives to take a tennis racket even if for the first time!

The Championship was held to contribute to the Rotary Polio Plus project - End Polio Now, according to the decisions of the Board ITFR (Barcelona 2008 and Vienna 2009). I think it is important to point out that the President of the Italian Republic sending the bronze medal to Chairman Marco Mari-naro has recognized the

merits of our Fellowship. The nice gesture is an appropriate recognition to the work made so far, par-ticularly to the capacities of Past Chairman Tomislav Maravic (Zagreb Centar RC) and Chairman Marco Marinaro (Salerno R.C.), who went up to such re-markable results.

The tournament became, for many tennis Rotarian players, an essential an-nual meeting; I deliber-ately declare that Rotar-ian tennis players and not tennis Rotarian play-

6 th ITFR WTC for Polio Plus Pugnochiuso - Italy, August 21st - 28th 2010

Rotary Ace Score an ace with Rotary… for a winning service !

International Tennis Fellowship of Rotarians

Edited by Valentina Dell’Acqua

Thursday, September 30 2010 Newsletter no. 35

ITFR Fact sheet ITFR currently has 970 members from 61 coun-tries and all continents;

ITFR can join Rotarians, Rotaractors and their spouses who love tennis and fellowship;

NO membership fee;

"Everything" is online - Registration, Members' database, Calendar, Voting, Financial re-ports, Constitution, Board, Newsletters, News, mailing lists etc.

ITFR upcoming tournaments

February 26-27 2011 ITFR SAMVS Winter Cup, Cluj – Napoca ROMANIA

January 22-24 2011 RCMIC President’s Cup Chennai, INDIA

August 27— Septem-ber 3 2011 7th ITFR World Tennis Championship CROATIA 2011, Bol (island of Brac—Dalmatia)

Bronze medal of the Italian Republic’s President awarded to ITFR

Marco Marinaro, ITFR Chair-man, and Giancarlo Ciuffreda, WTC Director

6 th ITFR WTC for Polio Plus -Pugnochiuso - Italy, August 21st - 28th 2010 (continues from page 1)

Page 2

do somersaults to organize the Championship in such a short time and this element, if possible, gives them more and more merits so the thanks for the perfect programming becomes even more heartfelt. Gian-carlo, has been both an excellent tennis player, and a brilliant host, assisted by his excellent staff, in par-ticular a special thanks to Roberto Mattia (RC Foggia Capitanata), ap-preciated by all the participants for his competence, availability and re-laxing power.

The choice of the location was really good, inside the Gargano National Park, which would, perhaps, be bet-ter called natural paradise for the beauty of the place and the charm of nature. Inside the Resort there were facilities and adequate services, ex-cellent and well maintained tennis courts, complemented by the avail-ability of the instructors Fabrizio and Duilio and the assistant Vito of the Sunball Tennis.

The tournament has been held, as mentioned, in a fantastic atmosphere of friendship, but not devoid of the more healthy competitive spirit, and always inclined to settle nicely, sometimes ironically, the inevitable problems that arise in such circum-stances where over one hundred people from ten countries attended. The following countries were repre-sented, apart from Italy: Austria, Bul-garia, Croatia, Estonia, Germany, England, Pakistan, Romania, Spain.

Among all the Rotarian tennis play-ers Sebastiano (Ninni) Monaco (RC

Siracusa, It-aly), stood out inside and outside the courts for his sympathy and humanity. In-deed, with general ap-proval - as

you can see in the picture on the left where he is between Marco Marinaro and Giancarlo Ciuffreda - Sebastiano has been awarded the prize for "Fair Play & Fellowship”.

The original boards were expanded during the tournament with the ap-propriate introduction of new bill-boards, in order to allow all players to play and have fun as much as pos-sible: the goal has been fully accom-plished reached plenty in fact at the end someone threatened to file his rackets in the vaults of his bank to withdraw it next year!

The White & Wood (wooden rackets and clothing strictly white) has been really appreciated as well as the mini tournament held in double yellow for the players’ children: Edoardo and Ettore Ciuffreda, Alessandro Mari-naro, Maria Lucia Tommolini.

Giancarlo and Duilio led the tourna-ment in just three hours, with great enjoyment and satisfaction of all.

After an intense week of tennis, the results have been summarized with the publication of the winners, refer-ring to our official website ITFR for a more detailed examination of the boards (www.itfr.org).

The gala evening was given in the presence of civilian and Rotarian authorities, in particular the Gover-nor of District 2120 Marco Torsello, with his wife Mrs. Lucia.

He addressed words of heartfelt sat-isfaction the Rotarian sport initiative. On Friday at the Finals there was also Mr. Sergio Sernia, Assistant of the Governor of the District 2120.

Once again thanks to the ability of the organizers and the wise general direction of our (we hope!) everlast-ing Chairman Marco Marinaro, we can close this experience very satis-fied, especially as Rotarians, be-cause the collected budgets for Po-lio Plus, the main goal of our meeting has been definitely worth of commit-ment of all. A special thanks, as al-ways, to the Sponsors.

Now our wait is for the next champi-onship which will be held in Croatia in Bol on the beautiful island of Brac (from August 27th, 2011) and we hope it will be more and more attended and always a reason of meeting both Rotarian friends and tennis players.

In the meantime, don’t lose sight of the tournament schedule ITFR for the next few months: who wishes to plan and enjoy a vacation (even just a w e e k e n d ) i n f r i e n d s h i p ? Giacomo Oppia

R.C. Cagliari North – District 2080

ITFR T.D. Italy

Marco Marinaro and the district 2120’s governor Marco Torsello

Group picture at the award ceremony

Rotary Friendship, tennis and solidarity

guished for the promotion of values such as fair play and fellowship.

During his speech, Marco Marinaro considered the meaning of the word "fellowship" in wider value of Rotary friendship, going beyond the principle of "Service Above Self", but also considering the shar-ing of interests as a tool to support the ideals of friendship and toler-ance among peoples and the sup-port and implementation of impor-tant social and humanitarian pro-jects.

By the way, Tennis is a sport that matches perfectly with the values of Rotary: Being together and shar-ing Rotary by tennis is the mission of this fellowship, which gives ap-pointment to all Rotarian tennis fans, as well to the next tourna-ments in Italy and worldwide, for the next World Championship to be held in Bol (Brac) in Croatia in the month of August 27, 2011 (for info: www.itfr.org; email: chair-man@itfr.org ).

Roberto Mattia

R.C. Foggia Capitanata

District 2120

sion for sport at the 5 tennis courts at disposal of Rotarians, under the careful and meticulous leadership of ITFR President Marco Marinaro (RC Salerno) and the Tournament Director Giancarlo Ciuffreda (RC Foggia Capitanata), without forget-ting promotion and support of Ro-tary's Polio Plus program which is for ITFR the main objective of its action until June 30, 2012.

The award ceremony, held on one of the wonderful terraces of the Hotel del Faro, with a breathtaking night view on the beaches of Pugnochiuso and Portopiatto, in-volved rotarian authority as Rotary District 2120 Governor Marco Torsello, Governor Assistant Ser-gio Sernia and President of the Ro-tary Club Foggia Capitanata Chris-tian Curatolo and civil authorities as the Councillor for Sports of the Municipality of Vieste Giuseppina Falcone and Vice President of Fog-gia CONI Nico Palatella with final delivery of prizes for the catego-ries Men's Singles under and over 55, Women's Singles, Men's and Women's Doubles, Mixed Doubles and the White & Wood, the special tournament held in the evening with players with wooden rackets and dressing white suits. A special prize was awarded to Sebastian Monaco, Rotary District 2110 (RC Siracusa), particularly distin-

The beautiful bay of Pugnochiuso - Vieste (Foggia) in the heart of Gar-gano National Park was the scenario from 21 to 28 August 2010 of 6th ITFR World Tennis Championship.

ITFR Association, International Ten-nis Fellowship of Rotarians, was founded in 2004 with the aim of bringing together Rotarians from all over the world with common interest for tennis, promoting friendship and solidarity. Needless to say, this be-comes a means to serve humanity through the tennis and promote peace and cultural exchange at in-ternational level, with the possibility of supporting social and humanitar-ian projects of Rotary.

The 6th championship, organized for the second time in Italy after the previous experience of Salerno 2007, was truly an international event with a total of over one hun-dred participants from 10 countries, with Bulgaria and Pakistan at the first participation to a ITFR world cham-pionship.

Despite the many entertainments related to the wonderful natural at-tractions of the place with excur-sions by land and sea in the most beautiful towns of Gargano like Vi-este, Peschici, Mattinata and Monte Sant'Angelo and the perfect tourist organization of the resort, the team has spent entire days of fun and pas-

Page 3

6th ITFR World Tennis Championship Results

6th ITFR World Tennis Championship PHOTO ALBUM

Page 4

Erhard Schmid & Heinz Lichtenegger vs Marcel Crisan & Adrian Luca

Andrei Luca vs Giuseppe Giordano

The pictures on this page are finalists’ (the only available now). All the participants are kindly asked to provide us more finals’ pictures for the next issue.

Paola Pisacane vs Maie Tomikas

Neubuser & Tiina Must vs Marion Mas & Paola Pisacane

Giuseppe Giordano & Martina Ghezzi vs Tsvetelina Gochkova & Tomislav Maravic

Andrea Gentili vs Claudio Dorigotti

Atanas Atanasov & Juraj Dragicevic vs Andrea Gentili & Sebastiano Monaco

Dear friends, I am pleased to inform you that the Board has appro-ved the appointment of new TDs,: Giancarlo Ciuffreda (TD Europe / Board member) Krishnaswami Ramakrishnan (he is already TD Asia, but now Asia has 100 members and so accordi-no to our Constitution he becomes Board member) Sajid Pervaiz (TD Pakistan) I congratulate these friends. I am sure that with the support of all of you we can continue to grow our wonderful Rotarian friendship/fellowship! I thank you our friend Giuseppe Iannuzzi, TD Europe 2008/2010, for his Rotarian service. YiRS Marco Marinaro ITFR Chairman

NEWS FROM THE ITFR BOARD

In the picture below from the left: Marco Marinaro, Sajid Pervaiz, Roberto Mattia and Giancarlo Ciuffreda

Dear ITFR friends,

as you probably know, we had a great week in Pugno-chiuso during our 6th ITFR World Championship !!

But, beside the pleasure and good tennis, we had our General Annual Meeting, Board meeting and CTD (Country Tour Directors) meeting.

Detailed report will be sent to you soon, but I just want to share with you some news regarding future ITFR World Championships, ITFR booths at RI Conventions and new Regional TDs.

ITFR World Championships The approval of any future ITFR World Championship should be done more then one year in advance - so it can be presented at the Annual General Meeting during the previous ITFR World Championship.

The organizers of the next ITFR World Championship must organize and be present at the ITFR booth during the next RI Convention.

One member of the ITFR Board should be nominated to help and supervise related activities

So this year we have decided that the 7th ITFR World Championship will be organized in Bol (http://www.bol.hr/en), Island of Brac, Croatia, 27 Aug 201-1. - 03 Sep 2011. Our friends from Brac will be in charge of ITFR booth during RI Convention in New Orleans (21-25 May 2011).

Mladen Novakovic, ITFR Vice Chairman, is nominated by the Board to help and supervise the event.

Please send your proposals for the ITFR World Cham-pionship in 2012 - the selected one will be presented during ITFR General Annual Meeting (next year in Bol).

RI Convention in New Orleans We have agreed to organize the one day ITFR Tourna-ment before the Convention - on Saturday, 21 May 2011. Eugene McNease (our TD for Americas) was not in Pu-gnochiuso, so we all agreed that he is in charge :))

New Regional TDs & Board Members I also want to congratulate our new Regional Tourna-

ment Directors: Giancarlo Ciuffreda, Italy - Regional TD Europe and Krishnaswami Ramakrishnan, India - Regio-nal TD Asia.

Both of them have organized perfect Tournaments and have more then 100 ITFR members in their Regions - so, according to our Constitution, they are automatically the ITFR Board Members.

Looking forward to see you soon.

YIR

Tomislav Maravic, PHF, PAG Croatia

ITFR World Tour Director

ITFR Past Chairman

On the left:

General

Assembly

Attendees

Below:

Board meeting

7 th ITFR World Tennis Championship — Croatia 2011

Bol (island of Brac — Dalmatia), August 27/September 3 2011

For more information visit: www.bol.hr

ITFR operates in accordance with Rotary International policy, but is not an agency of, or control-led by, Rotary International.