Tennis
Shock for SA at Cup draw
2009-03-06 08:01
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Johannesburg - The 'Moodie Blues' were distinctly off-key for South Africa when doubles specialist Wesley Moodie failed to turn up for the Euro-Africa Group One Davis Cup draw at Emperors Palace on Wednesday evening and was ruled out of the weekend tie against Macedonia.
The shock development emerged as a result of the South African Tennis Association's decision not to agree to a request from Moodie to travel first-class to South Africa, with the reluctant player making himself unavailable for the tie in the circumstances.
But almost as though ordained, South African Davis Cup captain John-Laffnie de Jager immediately substituted South African number one singles player Rik De Voest to partner Jeff Coetzee in the doubles a matter of days after he won the high-profiled doubles title with Russian Dimity Tursunov in the R22-million Dubai Open.
And, as if this was not enough to raise the ire of the South African team, it also emerged that Moodie had notified Coetzee only days earlier that he was terminating a partnership that earned the pair a rating of eighth-best couple in the world last year.
The distracting developments, however, did little to upset the mood, so to speak, in the South African camp, with the draw itself doing nothing to alter South Africa's rating as outright favourites.
De Jager also decided to choose Izak van der Merwe as South Africa's number two singles player, with the 1,95m big-server drawn to play against Macedonian number one Pedrag Rusevski in the opening game when the tie gets under way at 10am on Friday.
"It's probably better to get on the court right away instead of sitting around for your turn," said Van der Merwe, "so I'm happy with the way the draw has turned out."
De Voest plays Lazar Magdincev in the second singles game, with the Macedonian number two seemingly a far more formidable player than his 1 655th world ranking suggests - having beaten the exciting 37th-ranked Latvian, Ernests Gulbis, in a Davis Cup tie last year.
Magdincev explained his modest world ranking to the fact that he had only played in two ATP tournaments last year - but he was now in fine fettle and planned to be a good deal more active in 2009.
As matters have turned out, both South Africa and Macedonia will now utilise the same players in the singles and doubles, with De Voest and Coetzee taking on Rusevski and Magdincev at 1pm on Saturday.
De Jager said De Voest would be excused from playing in the reverse singles on Sunday if South Africa had a winning 3-0 lead by that stage in order to have more time to travel to the United States to play in the Indian Welles Masters tournament on Tuesday.
But Davis Cup competition is often unpredictable and no one is taking a 3-0 lead for granted.
De Voest, nevertheless, has booked a flight for himself just in case - and in business class as well.