Katie takes to court today

Top seed Katie Lafrance will start her campaign in the Walton 30th Bangladesh ITF Junior Tennis Championships today when she takes on India's Muskaan Ranjan in the girl's singles first round fixture at the National Tennis Complex in Ramna.

The 17-year-old from the United States, who drew everyone's attention after landing here on Sunday on a chartered aircraft to participate in the Grade-5 tournament of International Tennis Federation, spent yesterday at the Radisson Blu Hotel with her parents, informed a Bangladesh Tennis Federation official.

Lafrance's international ranking of 431 puts her ahead of second-seed 571-ranked Japanese Ichinose Runa as some 37 girls and 59 boys from 12 countries are taking part in the ITF sanctioned tournament, which is being staged here for the last 30 years.    

Apart from this tournament, Lafrance has so far participated in 16 tournaments across the world this year and has won 18 matches while suffering 16 defeats. Lafrance has played a total of 65 competitive matches in her career, winning 35 of those. She reached the semifinals in girls' singles three times and her last semifinal appearance was in Tep Khunnah Memorial Cup ITF Junior in Cambodia last month where she lost against Charmaine Shi Yi of Singapore in the last four.

Meanwhile, a total of 19 matches in boys' and girls' singles were held yesterday with only Rubel Hossain and Faruk Hossain among 12 Bangladeshi players winning their matches to advance to the next round.