NAMIBIA’s senior men’s tennis team leaves for Egypt this weekend to compete in the Africa Europe Group 3 Davis Cup tournament.
At a function on Monday evening, the president of the Namibia Tennis Association Sam Kaulinge thanked the sponsors who made the team’s trip possible. They include the Namibia Sport Commission which paid the air flights, Alexander Forbes, which sponsored N$60 000 towards tennis and Sanlam Namibia, which sponsored the clothing and equipment of the players.
The Namibian team consists of Tuki Jacobs who is studying in the United States, Henco Serdyn and Deon van Dyk, while Johan Theron is the non-playing captain.
Jean Erasmus was originally also supposed to be part of the team after he won national trials in preparation for the tournament, but due to his work commitments in the United States he had to withdraw.
Harald Fulle, the acting chief administrator of the NSC said they responded positively to the NTA’s request for financial assistance due to their exemplary development programme.
“Tennis has a development programme par excellence and other codes should take them as a guideline of how to go about it, so when they asked for assistance, we reacted positively,” he said.
Wessel Kotze of Sanlam said they believed in the development of Namibian sport and supported them to take part in world class events.
“Sport activities keep our children away from harmful activities and its very important to create our own heroes,” he said.
Kotze, who was also the team manager of the Namibian rugby team that participated at the Rugby World Cup, said there were two things that one could not train, namely passion and attitude, but luckily Namibians had enough of that in them.
“At the World Cup we had a saying – ‘the bigger the challenge, the bigger the response of the Namibian team,’” he said.
Erica Reissner of Alexander Forbes said they were delighted to support the team and wished them well on their trip.
The team captain Johan Theron said they would be playing in a very tough group and their aim was to remain in the group.
“The Egyptians and Tunisia are very strong, while the clay courts will also benefit them, so we are just aiming to remain in the group,” he said.
The top two teams will be promoted to Africa Europe Group II while the bottom two teams will be relegated to Africa Europe Group IV.
The nine nations competing in Africa Europe Group III are Egypt, Ghana, Algeria, Benin, Libya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Tunisia and Namibia.
