ITF World Seniors Teams Event - Men’s 40’s - Turkey - 18th - 23rd March 2013
Report by Jason Kane:
Venue for the 34th World Teams Event was Antalya, Turkey on the Mediterranean Sea played at the Ali Bey Club resort complex. Ali Bey happens to be the biggest tennis centre in Europe with 60 red clay courts.
New Zealand had a total on four teams contesting the world championships in the men’s 40’s, 50’s, 55’s and women’s 50’s divisions. ITF senior’s tennis starts from the 35-year age bracket and goes up incrementally in five-year age brackets till 80-years.
The New Zealand 40’s team consisted of Mark Hadley (Waikato/London), Matthew Sunderland (Christchurch) and Jason Kane. Our age group saw nineteen nations playing for the championship. In our four-team pool we had 4th seed Spain, 9th seed South Africa and unseeded Moldova.
First up for us was Spain. The format for the ties was two singles matches and one doubles match. Our team line up for the matches were Mark and Matthew in the singles matches and myself and Mark in the doubles. We received two clay court lessons in the singles matches. The Spanish were pretty grooved from the baseline not missing anything in classic clay court tennis. The doubles was a little different. We managed to get home 6/4 in the third in a tight match to register our first point of the event.
Second day we had 9th seeds South Africa. Matt when down in the number two singles first in straight sets to a handy player. Mark next up in a must win match to keep the tie alive played the match of the teams event for us winning in straights sets in a high quality game. Down to the doubles for the tie and an upset win we managed to pull it off winning in two tight sets 6/4 -7/5.
Last match of pool play was against Moldova who were the weakest team in our group. We cleaned then up 3/0 to finish second in our pool progressing into the 6th to 10th positional playoffs.
Our draw for the playoffs was the worst possible draw to have. We were drawn to play a knockout tie to qualify for the pool of four teams against 7th seeds Australia. Giving it all Matt went down in the first singles. Then it was up to Mark to keep us in the tie. Unfortunately he went down in two close fought sets. For the doubles the Australians rotated their squad giving us a comfortably win. The lost to Australia meant we finished 10th in the competition, which was the best result out of the New Zealand teams. The overall winners of the World 40’s were the Netherlands who beat France 2/1 in the final.
Second week at the resort was the World Individuals. I didn’t take part electing to go on holiday in Europe instead. The others in the team played along with another New Zealander Andrew Turner. Mark made the last 32 of the main draw. Andrew made the last 16 and Matt made the last 64. Mark and Andrew teamed up in the doubles taking out a few seeds before been knocked out in the quarterfinals by the top seeds.
An overall top ten finish wasn’t too bad for our unseeded team. We managed to finish above two of the big tennis powerhouse nations Argentina and 2nd seeds USA who bombed out big time on the clay. Next year the event is in West Palm Beach, Florida.