Tennis
De Voest in a hurry
2009-03-07 16:54
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Johannesburg - Rik De Voest was a man in a hurry as South Africa clinched their Euro-Africa Group One tie against Macedonia at a sulty, partly cloudy Emperors Palace on Saturday afternoon by winning the doubles in straight sets and taking an unassailable 3-0 lead.
The quick-fire 6-1 7-6 (7-1) 6-2 win in partnership with Jeff Coetzee in 1hr 34mins over Macedonia's Lazar Magdincev and Predrag Rusevski was effectively a passport for De Voest to catch a flight to the United States on Saturday night to prepare for the qualifying rounds of the prestigious Indian Welles Masters tournament, which get s underway on Tuesday.
"We agreed Rik could leave for America before the reverse singles," explained South African Davis Cup captain John-Laffnie de Jager, "as long we had already clinched victory - and it was all he deserved after his years of loyal service to South African tennis."
The premature victory was the ninth, notable Davis Cup success in a row for South Africa and paves the way for a home tie against Belarus - with the winner of that game afforded the opportunity of a play-off for a prized place in the competition's World Group in 2010.
With De Voest winging his way to the United States, his place in the final singles on Sunday, which are of academic importance only, will be taken by Raven Klaasen, with Izak van der Merwe playing the other game.
And while praising the South Africans for a professional performance, Macedonian team captain Vladimir Andonov also announced that he would not play his top two players in the reverse singles.
It is a decision that might be a relief for Magdincev and Rusevski, who have battled to come to terms with the high altitude conditions in both the singles and the doubles - which Magdincev described as "more like ski-ing than playing tennis." Notwithstanding this, the Macedonian pair put up a solid display in the second set against an irrepressible De Voest and the solid Coetzee and held their serves until 6-6 - where upon the men were seperated from the Macedonians, so to speak, with South Africa racing through the tiebreaker with a 7-1 winning margin.
De Voest delighted the 1 000 crowd with a succession of clinical, angled volleys and Coetzee belied the fact that he has been suffering from a severe chest cold for most of the week while flummoxing the Macedonians with a series of pin-point top-spin lobs.
One of them so frustrated Rusevski that he hit a ball so far out of the stadium that it might have set the roulette wheel in motion in the gaming resort's casino.
The well-oiled and cohesive South African couple did not drop a single service throughout the doubles game and the only point the Macedonians gained in the second-set tiebreaker was off a Coetzee serve - indicating, in the process, that the non-arrival of Wesley Moodie after he had been refused a first-class air ticket to South Africa was largely inconsequential.