Ondruska calls Davis Cup promotion South Africa’s finest 2017 tennis moment
South Africa’s Davis Cup tennis team have won promotion to Euro/Africa Group 1 where they will be competing next year.
South African tennis were given a huge injection of much-needed credibility with its promotion to Davis Cup’s Europe/Africa Group 1 competition following their triumphant play-off in Denmark this past weekend.
Playing in the higher tier in 2018 will mean some of the world’s stronger tennis playing nations will be competing on South African soil and that is likely to boost the interest in the game substantially. It may also tempt some of South Africa’s stronger players like Kevin Anderson to make themselves available for Davis Cup duty.
After two years of struggling for promotion from Group II, the country’s controlling tennis body, Tennis South Africa (TSA) has assembled a squad with coaches that finally produced the goods. For now, the national squad has a doubles team that can compete with the best in the world and at least one singles player that can hold its own against most players in the world’s top 200 group.
On Sunday, South Africa No 1 singles player, 20-year-old, Lloyd Harris played a blinder against Denmark’s seasoned campaigner Frederik Nielsen in the first of the reverse singles. Apart from a second-set stutter, Harris looked every inch a winner en route to a 6-1 1-6 6-4 6-3 victory that gave SA an unassailable 3-1 lead.
Both teams agreed to call off the second reverse singles because the outcome would not affect overall result of the play-off.
After the match, Harris was full of praise for Nielsen who played several Grand Slam quarterfinals, as well as being a former Wimbledon doubles champ.
“I was very happy with today’s match obviously because he is a world-class player. Obviously the second set didn’t go as planned after he came out firing. He played some ridiculously good shots that were really top-class,” said Harris.
The South African coach Marcos Ondruska was emotionally charged afterwards as he spoke about the sustained efforts to seek promotion to Davis Cup’s Group 1 tier.
“It has been an extremely good day and to emerge 3-1 from the tie is just incredible at this moment. It was something that we set out to achieve two years ago as a group,” said Ondruska.
In terms of the revised Davis Cup rules, the International Tennis Federation (ITF) has announced that all newly promoted teams will be home for their first tie next year. Hence South Africa will host their first 2018 Davis Cup tie.
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