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Lloyd Harris set to pass rankings landmark

It's not the ATP's top 10 or the top 20. It's not even the ATP's top 100 ranking positions.

But after taking the plunge to enter a higher level of international tennis this year following his successes in relatively modest Futures events, 20-year-old South African tennis prospect Lloyd Harris has come up trumps and will pass the 200-mark when the  ATP rankings are released on Monday.

This follows on Harris's qualification for the semi-finals of the ATP's Kaohsiung Challenger tournament in China on Friday after his impressive, straight-set victory over Australian Davis Cup player, John Millman.

In the process, the gangling 6ft 5in Cape Town-based South African will have improved his ATP ranking by more than 70 places since the start of 2017.

What is more, in a year in which he played a major role in South Africa gaining much-needed promotion to next year's Euro-Africa Group One segment of the Davis Cup, Harris has indicated he could emerge as the country's first genuine world-class player since the rise of the current 16th ATP-ranked Kevin Anderson.
 
Like Anderson, Harris's imposing height helps considerably in arming him with  a telling big-serve weapon and  his all-round repertoire is already without any conspicuous weak links.

And should Anderson lift his six-year, self-imposed exile from Davis Cup competition in 2018 - something that has been mooted with a degree of authenticity this time - a team consisting of Anderson and Harris as the singles players and world top-20 player, Raven Klaasen, and Ruan Roelofse already a proven doubles combination, South Africa could again earn an overdue status of some note in the event billed as the World Cup of Tennis.

While  Harris is only at the beginning of the road of the tennis big time, the towering kid from Cape Town can already echo the sentiment of the hit song that 2017 has not been a good year - it has been "a very good year."

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