Clean sweep victory in Irene for South African Davis Cup team
South Africa's Davis Cup team treated tennis lovers of Pretoria over the weekend with an excellent performance whereby they easily beat Slovenia 5-1.
A dominant South African Davis Cup team romped to a 5-0 win over Slovenia at the Irene Country Club, Pretoria the past weekend.
South Africa failed to lose a set in both reverse singles rubbers on Sunday and were in firm control throughout play.
This followed the drama of the first day’s play. Firstly South Africa’s number one, Lloyd Harris swept Mike Urbanija off the track (6-1; 6-1; 6-2) and then South Africa’s second best singles player, Nik Scholtz, surprised friend and foe by biting the bullet for a hard earned victory in five sets (3-6; 6-7; 7-6; 7-6; 7-6) over the visitors’ number one, Grega Zemlia. Zemlia is currently placed 300 places higher than Scholtz on the world rankings.
On Saturday the South African doubles specialist Raven Klaasen and Ruan Roelofse overcame Slovenia’s Grega Zemlia and Tomislav Ternar in straight sets (7-6; 6-2; 6-4) to clinch an overall victory for team South Africa.
Both reverse singles on Sunday were reduced to best of three tie break sets as the tie had already been decided. Lloyd Harris and Nik Scholtz dominated to give South Africa the clean sweep.
Harris beat Tilen Zitnik (6-3; 6-3) whilst Scholtz beat Tomislav Ternar (6-2; 6-4) in front of a large, enthusiastic crowd.
Marcos Ondruska, the South African Captain said he couldn’t be happier with the clean sweep.
“I am extremely happy and proud of my team. Everything worked for us this weekend and my players executed well and really lifted their games to the highest level I’ve seen since taking over captaincy. The boys kept composed and put on a good show. We lost only two sets in five rubbers played all weekend which showed the form of the entire team was on point,” a delighted Ondruska said.
South Africa will now play Denmark, in Denmark in round 3 from 15-17 September 2017. The winner of this tie will be promoted to Group 1.
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