A Bedfordview resident who has been a member of Edenvale’s River Ridge Tennis Club since the age of 10 will pull on the green and gold next in August, after being selected to represent South Africa at the International Tennis Federation (ITF) Masters World Championships in Portugal.

Igor Rodionov has been named in the national men’s 40 side that will contest the Tony Trabert Cup in Lisbon and Oeiras from August 2 to 7. He will line up alongside captain James Liebenberg (Western Cape), Stefan du Toit (Eastern Cape) and Le Roux Conradie (Western Cape).

Selection was made by Tennis South Africa on the strength of national rankings earned at Masters tournaments and the SA National Championships.

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For Rodionov, the call-up closes a loop that started on the courts in Edenvale more than three decades ago.

“River Ridge has been my club since I was 10 years old, and a lot of what I’m taking to Portugal started on those courts,” he said.

“It’s an incredible club with incredible members, and plenty of them have been part of this for as long as I’ve been playing. Wearing the national colours is something you imagine as a kid and don’t really expect to happen. Now I’d like to go and try to win some matches with it.”

The Tony Trabert Cup is effectively the Davis Cup of masters’ tennis for 40- to 45-year-olds. Nations are drawn into groups and play ties made up of two singles rubbers and a doubles, with the medal matches staged at the Jamor national sports complex outside Lisbon on August 7.

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The field is a strong one. Among the players expected in the men’s 40 draw are former world No.19 Xavier Malisse of Belgium, Spain’s Daniel Gimeno-Traver and Portugal’s Frederico Gil, who will have home support behind him on the red clay.

One of the bigger adjustments will be the drop from the Highveld to sea level, where the ball sits up and rallies stretch out.

With clay in short supply on the Reef, Rodionov has been travelling to the two clay courts at Modderfontein Tennis Club and training with lower-compression ‘green dot’ balls, which move more slowly through the air and mimic the heavier conditions waiting for him in Portugal.

Off the court, he is the founder of ADVICEment, a Johannesburg-based company that builds PDF generation software for asset managers, which makes fitting a serious training programme around a full working week something of a balancing act.

Rodionov will stay on in Portugal after the team event to contest the individual World Championships, which run at the same venues from August 8 to 15.