Trinidad and Tobago’s senior tennis team will take on their Barbadian counterparts in a warm up meet at the Shaw Park Tennis Facility, Scarborough, from June 1-3. The friendly competition is a part of the national team’s final preparations for the 2012 Davis Cup Americas Zone Group III Tournament.

Tobago has been selected to host the regional leg of the prestigious Davis Cup by BNP Paribas, from June 18 – 23. It’s the island’s first time hosting an international senior tournament and members of the national team have been training extremely hard to make a good showing on home soil. As such, the T&T team will test their mettle against Barbados in what promises to be a highly competitive match up.

T&T will be represented by locally top ranking player, Yohansey Williams and Vaughn Wilson from Tobago, along with Liam Gomez, Luke BeCaires and alternate Seve Day from Trinidad. The Barbadian contingent will comprise two of the players that represented the nation in the Group II Tournament.

Barbados advanced to Group II after last year's Group III tournament at the same time that Trinidad and Tobago advanced to Group III from Group IV. The Barbadians will present a formidable opponent for the T&T players, but coordinator of the 2012 Davis Cup Americas Zone Group III, Dunstan De Noon, is confident that the host team is capable of holding their own against strong competitors like Barbados’ 20-year-old Darian King, who is a world ranked senior.

“Playing Barbados prepares us to play the likes of countries that are the best in our group,” said De Noon, who also serves as a coach for the national under-18 team. “It gives us the level of competition we would want to be exposed to in going forward as we prepare to play in the next two weeks.”

Come June 18, teams from the ten countries in the Americas Group III will converge on Shaw Park to vie for the group’s top two positions. The number one and two teams will then advance to Group II, where they will compete for a chance at higher group promotion in 2013.