Publications
Partners
Cape Town - The South Africa men’s team will face Bulgaria at home in their next Davis Cup Euro/Africa Group II tie.
This news follows the tournament draw that took place in London on Wednesday afternoon.
The tie will take place in either April or September this year, with Tennis South Africa set to announce the final date and venue in the coming weeks.
Team South Africa were relegated from Euro/Africa Group I last year, following their loss away to Portugal in a relegation play-off.
However, with recent changes to the Davis Cup rules and structure, victory in the home tie against the Eastern Europeans, would see Marcos Ondruska’s charges achieve immediate promotion.
“I couldn’t be happier about the draw result. Playing at home is a massive advantage than when we play away. It bodes well for us…we get to put the kind of court that we want, we get to play where we would like. We can choose to play at sea level or at altitude,” said Ondruska.
“I think that all of our players are also in good form, Lloyd (Harris) has just broken into the top 100 ATP rankings for the first time; Raven (Klaasen) is firing on all cylinders and so is Ruan (Roelofse). All of these things bode well for us, and our entire team does really well on altitude.”
South Africa – the 1974 tournament winners – are currently ranked 44th overall in the Davis Cup rankings.
Bulgaria, meanwhile, are ranked 64th, with Grigor Dimitrov (24th in the current ATP world rankings) as their leading player.
Ondruska added: “Certainly, there is a consideration that Bulgaria is a strong team, it will be interesting to see if Dimitrov plays, because if he does, it will be a very different tie. If he does not play, it will be interesting to see what team they can put together before coming down to South Africa.
“I am looking forward to it all, it is a different Davis Cup format this year…if we do win this one match, then we automatically get promoted back to Group I, so it is a big tie.”
