Woodford Wells Lawn Tennis Club players will be in the international spotlight this month when they fly out to Spain to take part in the 2015 European Senior Tennis Club Championships.

The Essex club’s women’s Over-50 team will take on the cream of the amateur game from the continent when the elite event is staged at Europe’s premier sports venue in Murcia ‒ the five-star La Manga Club ‒ in south east Spain.

Pat Wire, Elizabeth Eden, Melanie Harling and Mary Collins will compete against St. George’s Hill in Surrey and other teams from Sweden, Spain, Turkey, Belgium and the Netherlands for the prestigious honour of being crowned European champions.

Organised by Tennis Europe, the event will feature men and women from its 49 tennis federations competing at the resort’s extensive 28-court academy for titles in 11 different age categories.

Previous winners have included entrants from Germany, Portugal, Holland, France, England, Austria, Hungary, Italy, Belgium, Spain and Czech Republic and the competition is set to be as fierce as ever.

Each country can be represented by a maximum of two clubs in every sector, with teams comprising between four to seven players for men’s categories and two to five for women.

This year’s event will feature one of the strongest challenges ever from England with three teams from Surrey, two from Warwick, Leicestershire and south west London and one each from Hertfordshire, Northumberland, Yorkshire, Dorset and Hampshire.

The clay court championships will see elite players in the Super Seniors categories compete at the resort, with men’s age groups ranging from 55 to Over-70s and women’s from 55-plus to Over-65.

Attention will then fall on the younger categories for the rest of the event, with seniors between the ages of 35-plus to 50 for men and 40-plus to 50-plus for ladies.

As the official overseas training base of the Lawn Tennis Federation, La Manga Club regularly hosts the world’s top tennis stars as well as staging both Davis and Fed Cup tennis matches, with South Africa’s Kevin Anderson, ranked 15th in the world, among the recent visitors.