Ramphadi and South Africa set sights on historic World Team Cup final
After successive bronze medals in the quad World Group at the BNP Paribas World Team Cup, Donald Ramphadi hopes that 2022 will be the year that he helps South Africa to create a piece of history at the ITF’s flagship wheelchair tennis team event.
Never before has an African nation reached a final in one of the four championship events, but for the third year in a row South Africa will contest the quad semi-finals on Thursday, with Brazil the opponents this time.
“Last year was a very close semi-final with the USA team, so this time around, with Lucas (Sithole) in the team we come back focussed mentally and we know everything we need to do for us to get there (to the final),” said Ramphadi on a busy last day of round-robin group ties that saw the 28-year-old start the day resuming his singles match against world No. 1 Niels Vink of the Netherlands.
“Already we’ve started very well, so we just look forward to the next match.”
Ramphadi had indeed started well against Vink on Tuesday evening as South Africa and Netherlands met in their round-robin group. He trailed the world No. 1 by just one game at 4-3 and 30-30 when rain caused the match to be suspended. However, Wednesday’s resumption brought a change in fortunes as Vink took comparatively little time to wrap up the opening set before withstanding a spirited fightback from Ramphadi in the second set to close out the match 6-3 6-4.
Thereafter Sam Schroder and Vink dominated the doubles contest and later in the world’s top two ranked players returned to court to beat Japan 3-0, with former world No. 2 and 2013 US Open champion Stihtole joining Ramphadi to comfortably overcome Turkey in both singles matches in their remaining Group A tie.
“Obviously Lucas has a lot of experience. so having in the team makes us better, I think,” said 28-year-old Ramphadi after Sithole missed out on the 2021 World Team Cup, where Danny Mohlamonyane proved to be an able No. 2 to Ramphadi, who was one of last year’s outstanding performers in Sardinia.
While Ramphadi and Sithole steered South Africa to their bronze medal at the 2019 World Team Cup, Ramphadi’s career has since gathered pace as he’s developed from a player with a quad singles ranking outside the world’s top 25 into a rising star whose progress and potential was rewarded with a wild card for this year’s Australian Open.
“I’m still saying thanks to the Australian Open for giving me the wild card because I feel like that is the one that has pushed me to where I am right now,” admitted Ramphadi, who reached a career-best ranking at No.7 in March this year.
“I’m very excited to be where I am right now and I really feel like this is where I should have been in past years, but all the struggle of funding, it’s been a problem, with me travelling so much. It’s still a struggle but we just try hard to get me out there.”
While South Africa finished runners-up to reigning World Team Cup champions Netherlands in their round-robin group, their next meeting could be in Saturday’s final in Vilamoura, if they can negotiate their respective semi-finals against Brazil and USA.
Brazil’s Ymanitu Silva and Leandro Pena had already established an unassailable lead over USA before Tuesday’s play was curtailed due to rain and amid a busy third day’s schedule Brazil continued to impress, while USA stuttered to a 2-1 loss to Great Britain.
However, David Wagner and Bryan Barten had already done enough to earn nine-time champions USA the runners-up berth in Group A and a semi-final against Netherlands that’s a rematch of the 2021 final.
With the World Team Cup junior World Group semi-finalists set to be finalised on Thursday, second seeds Australia completed a 3-0 Group B win over fellow former champions Netherlands on Wednesday, while Japan completed a 2-1 win over Argentina.
That leaves both the 2019 champions Australia and and 2021 champions Japan both in the hunt for a place in the semi-finals as Japan prepare for a must-win tie against Netherlands.