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Davis Cup Tennis in April 2007 at Guatemala, Haiti in American Zone III

BLTA Searching For Top Players For Davis Cup

15th December

The Bahamas Lawn Tennis Association will hold its Davis Cup Trials pre-qualifiers beginning today and climaxing on Sunday at the National Tennis Centre.

Matches will begin at 10am each day in the round robin style tournament that will have three pools with four players in each pool.

According to the tournament organizers, each player will play three matches. And the winner of each pool would advance to the main draw. The overall winner would be determined by the best win-loss percentage.

The 12 players invited to take part in the pre-qualifying tournament included: Paul Aranha, Cerone Rolle, Kweku Symonette, Mathew Sands, Koeche Smith, Jamaal Adderly, Jyles Turnquest, Johnathan Hanna, Larry Rolle, Jason Rolle, Jacob Fountain and Robert Smith.

In 2005 the Bahamas failed to win any of its matches at the tie and fell to zone two for the first time in 11 years.

After struggling in 2005, at the latest round of Davis Cup play in El Salvador in June of this year, once again a young Bahamian team headed by Coach John Farrington was under pressure to finish as one of the top two countries to have a chance to regain American Zone One status.

The 2006 team included number one seed Marvin Rolle, number two seed Devin Mullings, along with HiCone Thompson, and Ryan Sweeting. Sweeting is now playing for the United States.

The BLTA is trying to identify at least two additional players from the pre-qualifying tournament that would join Rolle, Mullings and Thompson who are now veteran players at Davis Cup.

Going into the tie in 2007, The Bahamas will find itself in American?s Zone III with seven other countries including Barbados, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Haiti, Panama, and Puerto Rico.

In April of 2007 in Guatemala, the Bahamas will enter another round of play with the eight teams divided into two round-robin pools of four with the first two teams from each pool advance to another round-robin group.

The teams finishing first and second in this final pool are promoted to Americas Zone Group II in 2008. The teams finishing third and fourth in each pool also advance to another round-robin pool. The teams finishing in third and fourth in this subsequent pool are relegated to Americas Zone Group IV in 2008.