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Pacific Oceania takes on Malaysia tomorrow
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Posted on Apr 05 2006
Pacific Oceania will start its all-important Davis Cup Asia/Oceania Group II second round tie against Malaysia tomorrow at the headquarters of Ligue Caledonienne de tennis in Noumea, New Caledonia.
The Southeast Asian nation has defeated the islanders in four previous head-to-head matches, the last one occurring in July 2003 when Malaysia swept Pacific Oceania 3-0. The islanders also lost with the same score in 1999 and fell 2-1 in 1997 and 1996.
According to Oceania Tennis Federation executive officer Patrick O’Rourke, the draw for the Pacific Oceania-Malaysia tie will be made at 12pm today and placed on the Davis Cup website by early afternoon.
The opening two singles will be played tomorrow starting at 3pm, the doubles on Saturday will be at 2pm, and the reverse singles will begin at 11am on Sunday.
Earlier, Malaysia named its strongest team for the tie in Noumea. Included are their most experienced Davis Cup players Selvam Veerasingam (20-11 singles and 9-7 doubles record in Davis Cup) and Yew-Ming Si, who has an ATP doubles ranking of 970.
The rest of the team is made up of Jonathan Yip Shihao, Rasvan Rawi, and captain Muliyadi Jamal.
Pacific Oceania Davis Cup captain Jeff Race will be fielding an unchanged team for the islanders’ tie against Malaysia.
West Nott of Marshall Islands will be looking to emulate his win against Hong Kong and will be joined by teammates Juan Langton of Western Samoa, Michael Leong of Solomon Islands, and Brett Baudinet of Cook Islands
Unlike its first round tie with Hong Kong, which Pacific Oceania lost 1-4, the islanders are optimistic that they would put together a better performance against Malaysia, especially playing on home soil.
O’Rourke earlier reported that Langton and Leong have been playing satellite tournaments in India where they have gained valuable matchplay experience against strong opposition.
Nott, who scored the only win against Hong Kong, for his part, has been getting plenty of tennis at his base at the University of Washington in Seattle, while Bret Baudinet will be looking to recapture the form that took him to the gold medal at the South Pacific Games last year.
