South Africa’s Davis Cup team is still stuck in World Group II of this international tennis competition, after they lost 1-4 to Morocco at Tennis Gauteng North’s headquarters in Groenkloof, Pretoria, this past weekend.

In fact, after the weekend’s defeat to Morocco, South African Davis Cup captain Pietie Norval’s focus will be on trying to avoid relegation from World Group II. That play-off tie will take place in February next year and South Africa’s opponent will be announced later.

Three of the five players in Norval’s team against Morocco – Marc van der Merwe, Connor Doig and Thando Longwe-Smith – were involved in the first Davis Cup tie of their careers this weekend.

The other two South Africans, Alec Beckley (4) and Leo Matthysen (2), who are both 24 years old, have between them only represented their country six times in the Davis Cup before this tie.

Beckley and Van der Merwe (who remarkably made his Davis Cup debut at the age of 31) fought hard on the first day of the tie on Saturday, but both had to bow the knee to their Moroccan opponents in the first two singles rubbers.

The two South Africans both won their first sets against Morocco’s second seed Yassine Dlimi and their top player, Taha Baadi, respectively, but after that the North African players prevailed.

On Sunday, Beckley (who fought bravely despite feeling unwell since late last week) and Thando Longwe-Smit kept South Africa’s chances of success alive by defeating Morocco’s Yassine Dlimi and Younes Lalami in the doubles rubber 7-6; 3-6; 7-6.

17-year-old Connor Doig stepped in for Beckley in the first of the reverse singles rubbers on Sunday. The youngster appeared nervous at first but began to play with more confidence later in the first set against Morocco’s top-ranked player, Baadi.

However, Doig made too many unforced errors and Baadi’s 6-3; 6-2 victory sealed the tie for the North African team.

In a dead rubber final match, Moroccan player Karim Bennani beat 19-year-old Leo Matthysen 6-1; 6-2.

SA captain Pietie Norval was full of praise for Beckley after he dug deep two days in a row to give his team a chance.

“We knew before we came into this tie how strong their team was, and they were always going to be the favourites, so we had to do everything we could just to be competitive, which we did,” Norval said.

According to Norval they knew Beckley wasn’t going to be able to play two matches in a row on Sunday, because he was almost on his way to hospital after the doubles rubber.

– Questions will certainly be asked about the South African team’s struggle to properly assert themselves in the Davis Cup tournament. Several top players, including the country’s star player Lloyd Harris, who was ranked as high as 31st in the ATP rankings before a series of setbacks with injuries, could not be involved in this important tie. Harris is fit again and a few weeks ago played against the world’s fourth best player, Taylor Fritz, in the second round of the US Open.

Other players like Devin Badenhorst and Kris van Wyk could also not be convinced to play for their country. With more experienced and higher ranked players like them, South Africa would probably have won the tie against Morocco with ease.

South African tennis fans will certainly want answers as to why Norval had to scrape together a team for this battle against Morocco.

South Africa dropped to 58th place in the Davis Cup rankings after this defeat. Morocco is now 51st in the rankings and other African countries that are also placed better than South Africa are Egypt (44th) and Tunisia (47th).

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