KUALA LUMPUR: Tennis Malaysia (TM) is hoping the national team's encouraging performances at the Billie Jean King Cup (BJKC) Asia-Oceania Group II competition recently will help them convince the government to support their programme.
TM honorary secretary Muhammad Shahrul Hafidz AB Rahim believes they can build on their momentum and aim for promotion in next year's BJKC as well as medals at the Thailand Sea Games if they have the right support.
The national women's team achieved a best-ever third place finish, from 11 nations, in BJKC which was held at National Tennis Centre last week.
"The players played their hearts out for the country at BJKC and even upset the third seeds Uzbekistan en route to the playoffs," said Hafidz yesterday.
"Most of the players in the BJKC team had come up through the TM national junior circuit and we are proud of them.
"We hope that the government, especially the Youth and Sports Ministry and the National Sports Council (NSC), will now look at us as medal prospects and support our programme.
"We need their support to better prepare the team for next year, which is an important year for us. In addition to BJKC in July, we will also have the Thailand Sea Games in December.
"We are preparing a report on our performances at BJKC to present to NSC soon and hope to get them to buy-in.
"It would be great if we could get our players into NSC's Podium Programme."
Hafidz added that he is confident the national team can improve on their performances from last year's Cambodia Sea Games where they won two bronzes.
The Podium Programme is a dedicated national elite athlete preparation programme which supports athletes training and competition programmes and gives them access to facilities at NSC and the National Sports Institute.
In addition to training and competition support, TM also hope NSC can help secure the national team a foreign coach.
"Our players are already at the high performance level and they need a coach who can take them to the next level," said Hafidz.
"Of course good coaches are expensive, however, we hope NSC can support us just like how they support other sports.
"When these foreign coaches come here, our local coaches can also learn from them and upgrade themselves."