Time to get back to the drawing board as Zimbabwe puts on dismal Davis Cup show in Romania

In a tie that looked balanced on paper, Zimbabwe still found the going tough in Romania as the host nation proved too strong for Zimbabwe.

The first rubber of the tie saw Zimbabwe’s number two seed Benjamin Lock upsetting the Romanian top seed Marius Copil 6-4;7-5. Lock gave the Zimbabwean side a perfect start to the tie. However Takanyi Garanganga who is Zimbabwe’s top seed found the going tough in his match against Romania’s second seed Dima Dragos losing in straight sets 3-6;3-6.

The loss by Garanganga meant that the two teams ended day one levelled at 1-2. In the very crucial doubles match that was played on day two, Benjamin Lock and Courtney Lock lost to the Romanian pair of Florin and Horia Vlaud. The doubles loss handed advantage to the Romanians who now needed a single win in the remaining two rubbers to seal the Victory.

In the first reverse singles matches, Zimbabwe’s Garanganga once again found the going tough against Marius Copil losing 6-4;75.The loss handed the tie to Romania .Romania went 3-1 up. The two teams agreed to play a dead rubber which would not have much bearing on the outcome of the tie and it was an opportunity for Zimbabwe’s upcoming youngster Mehluli Sibanda to have a taste of the grand stage. Sibanda faced Gianu Fillip Cristian in a low order contest match which was eventually won by the Romanian 6-3; 7-5

The Loss means Zimbabwe will remain in Euro Africa zone group two while Romania will have a chance to compete in the 2020 Davis cup qualifiers.
After all has been said and done, the dismal performance by Zimbabwe is more of a result of lack of competitiveness within the team. The critical questions to ask evolve around the pool of players to be selected for Davis cup duty. Are those the only players that can represent the country and if so what is Tennis Zimbabwe doing to ensure that these players are more competitive?

Every year Zimbabwe exports tennis talent to oversees universities and colleges. The question that we would want to pose is whether those players are also given an opportunity to represent their country. The other question that can be asked is whether Tennis Zimbabwe is doing enough in terms of development and graduating junior players into the seniors category. It is evident that there is still a lot of work that needs to be done to sanitise tennis in Zimbabwe if ever there are going to be positive results.

by Mike J Maketho