Australia face a tough challenge as they try to win their way back into the Davis Cup World Group later this month against Chile with a team of virtual unknowns.
Australian Davis Cup captain John Fitzgerald yesterday named a six-man squad for the Sept. 19 to Sept. 21 clash in Santiago — but missing was former world No. 1 Lleyton Hewitt, who recently underwent season-ending hip surgery.
SUBBING
In his absence, world No. 67 Chris Guccione will be leading a weak Australian Davis Cup team on clay against a Chilean team led by Olympic silver medallist and 11th-ranked Fernando Gonzalez.
Guccione will be joined in the singles by journeyman Peter Luczak, who has not played since a first round French Open loss in May and is ranked 171 in the world.
The others in the squad are rookies Carsten Ball, 21, Brydan Klein, 19, Sam Groth, 20, and promising 15-year-old Bernard Tomic. Ball has the highest world ranking amongst them at No. 188.
Doubles specialist Paul Hanley is also unavailable.
Fitzgerald conceded Australia faces a tough task.
‘DIFFICULT’
“It’s a difficult assignment,” he said. “You’d be silly to say otherwise, but I’m actually genuinely excited because we’ve got new kids who are an incredibly enthusiastic group who want to go down there and improve themselves and give it a go.”
“If Gonzalez is at his best, it’s a difficult assignment and if [Nicolas] Massu is at his best, it’s difficult,” he said.
Fitzgerald said he was looking forward to seeing which players in his squad rise to the challenge.
Australia have won the Davis Cup 28 times, but have also been beaten 5-0 in their last two ties in South America.
North Korea’s FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup-winning team on Saturday received a heroes’ welcome back in the capital, Pyongyang, with hundreds of people on the streets to celebrate their success. They had defeated Spain on penalties after a 1-1 draw in the U17 World Cup final in the Dominican Republic on Nov. 3. It was the second global title in two months for secretive North Korea — largely closed off to the outside world; they also lifted the FIFA U20 Women’s World Cup in September. Officials and players’ families gathered at Pyongyang International Airport to wave flowers and North Korea flags as the
Taiwan’s top table tennis player Lin Yun-ju made his debut in the US professional table tennis scene by taking on a new role as a team’s co-owner. On Wednesday, Major League Table Tennis (MLTT), founded in September last year, announced on its official Web site that Lin had become part of the ownership group of the Princeton Revolution, one of the league’s eight teams. MLTT chief executive officer Flint Lane described Lin’s investment as “another great milestone for table tennis in America,” saying that the league’s “commitment to growth and innovation is drawing attention from the best in the sport, and we’re
Coco Gauff of the US on Friday defeated top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka 7-6 (7/4), 6-3 to set up a showdown with Olympic champion Zheng Qinwen in the final of the WTA Finals, while in the doubles, Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching was eliminated. Gauff generated six break points to Belarusian Sabalenka’s four and built on early momentum in the opening set’s tiebreak that she carried through to the second set. She is the youngest player at 20 to make the final at the WTA Finals since Denmark’s Caroline Wozniacki in 2010. Zheng earlier defeated Wimbledon champion Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic 6-3, 7-5 to book
For King Faisal, a 20-year-old winger from Ghana, the invitation to move to Brazil to play soccer “was a dream.” “I believed when I came here, it would help me change the life of my family and many other people,” he said in Sao Paulo. For the past year and a half, he has been playing on the under-20s squad for Sao Paulo FC, one of South America’s most prominent clubs. He and a small number of other Africans are tearing across pitches in a country known as the biggest producer and exporter of soccer stars in the world, from Pele to Neymar. For
RSS