The National Deaf Tennis Championships makes its debut at the National Tennis Centre in Roehampton, the home of British Tennis, over the May Day Bank Holiday weekend.

Thirty seven of the country's leading deaf players battling will battle for honours and members of the Great Britain National Deaf Tennis Squad will use the event to gauge their form as they vie for selection for September’s Deaflympic Summer Games in Taipei.

The National Championships offers a range of opportunities for all standards, with Open division Singles and Doubles events for the country’s best deaf players, B Division Singles and Doubles events for new and up-and-coming players and also Over 35 Singles and a one day Vets Doubles event.

The finals will take place on Bank Holiday Monday, 4th May, which coincidentally marks the start of National Deaf Awareness Week.

Surrey-based coach Peter Willcox will be top seed as he goes in search of his ninth Men’s Singles National title, despite currently taking a step back from international competition. Originally from Tiverton, Devon, Willcox has pursued a career path followed by several of his peers in the last two years and has become a Lawn Tennis Association licensed coach, working near his Byfleet home.

Willcox is one of four previous National Champions in the field for the Men’s Singles, which also includes Anthony Sinclair, from Northern Ireland, and Wiltshire-based Scot Daniel Tunstall, both of who are former two-time champions.

Only Sinclair has interrupted Willcox’s run of success in the Men’s Singles since 1999, recording back-to-back wins in 2001 and 2002.

Tunstall, from Devizes, who is the brother of award winning singer-songwriter KT Tunstall, is one of two Wiltshire-based tennis coaches in the Men’s Singles. The other is 2005 runner-up Lewis Fletcher, who is also likely to lay down strong a challenge to Willcox’s quest for a seventh successive title.

Fletcher and his partner Catherine Graham are joint Head Coaches at Ramsbury Tennis Club near Marlborough and Graham will go to Gloucester in search of her sixth National Women’s Singles title in seven years.

The only other former Women’s Singles champion in this year’s field is Oxfordshire’s Beth Simmons, who made the most of Graham’s absence through injury in 2005 to take the title.

Surrey’s Fiona Brookes also contests the women’s singles, while her daughter Bethany attempts to regain the Girls’ B Division Singles title she won in 2007.

The nine different events to be contested at this year’s Championships includes the addition of a Veterans’ Doubles, with entries including former singles or doubles National Champions Angela Charles-Edwards, Paul Kenward and Michael Trimm.

The National Deaf Tennis Championships has it roots as far back as the 1930s and former two-time National Men’s Singles champion and President of the British Deaf Tennis Association Bryan Whalley will exhibit his pioneering research into the rich history of British deaf tennis at the National Tennis Centre throughout this year’s event. Towards the end of 2007 Middlesex-based Mr Whalley received a Lottery Grant through the Heritage Lottery Fund to enable him to carry out the research, which he aims to present in the form of a book and DVD in time for the 2009 Deaflympic Summer Games in Taipei. For more information about Bryan Whalley’s research, which is also supported by The Tennis Foundation, please visit: www.historyofbritishdeaftennis.com. The 2008 National Deaf Tennis Championships is supported by The Tennis Foundation, Slazenger, and Highland Spring.

Spectators are welcome to watch the National Championships at the National Tennis Centre and entry is FREE.