The globe-crossing tennis circuit has its big Opens: there's the French, the US, and the Australian. But the Soweto?

South Africa's most famous township - synonymous with matchbox-size houses, Nelson Mandela and the fight to end white minority rule - will host its first major international tennis tournament from Monday.

The $100 000 tournament has as its top seeds the French "Magician" world number 50 Fabrice Santoro and the big-serving Luxembourger Gilles Muller, who knocked Rafael Nadal out of Wimbledon in 2005.

Also in the line-up is Sergei Bubka Junior, son of the top Ukrainian athlete who broke the pole vaulting world record 35 times. The younger athlete won the Kyoto Challenger in Japan last month.

"Everybody's talking about 'Jeez tennis is going to Soweto'," said Ian Smith of the South African Tennis Association, speaking about the event which follows the SA Open's recent re-entry onto the ATP scene after a 14-year absence.

The Soweto Open is part of the ATP challenger tour, a springboard circuit for up-and-coming players to earn ranking points to enter the world tour, and will be followed by an ITF women's event.

Players will travel daily from Johannesburg's plush north to the massive southwestern sprawl of Soweto, which had been set aside for blacks around the city's mine dumps under white minority rule.

Soweto is now undergoing a renaissance, with posh new shopping malls and plans for a new theatre complex, as local officials try to transform it from a backwater community into a proper destination.

The tennis tournament will also have a role in that transformation, aiming to inspire a new crop of tennis players in a football-mad, under-resourced area where few know about smashes, a love score or drop shots.

"Taking the game forward, we've got to take it into the black areas. You need to get the game to the masses," said Smith.

With seating for 2000 people, the tournament will give Sowetans a unique chance to see the sport played in their back-yards.

Matches will be played at the Arthur Ashe Tennis Complex built in the 1970s by the late three-time Grand Slam title winner who was the first black man to win at Wimbledon and the US Open.

Now undergoing a facelift after years of neglect, the tennis courts are used to coach local youngsters in SATA-run clinics and will also host Soweto's first Davis Cup tie against Belarus in May.

A daily visitor is 13-year-old Moleboheng Molatudi, who hopes to be a professional tennis player and join the South African Davis Cup team. And be world number one.

"I love tennis," said Molatudi, one of the ball-boys at the tournament which will also use local Sowetans as line umpires.

Few on the development programme would have imagined playing tennis before in an area where a R1,200 (130 dollars) racquet is out of reach for families struggling to put food on the table, said coach Kgotso Matshego, 28.

The offer of free coaching has quickly caught on with some 30 children getting lessons every day.

"It was kind of like a sleeping giant. To my surprise they actually loved it," Matshego told AFP.

"The kids more than anything need something to do to stay away from crime and all that stuff because that's a plague around our communities.

"So this is a lifeline for these kids and I hope they make it big someday."