SA's rocky road at US Open

2008-08-19 21:17

Johannesburg - Winning the coveted US Open singles title is one thing. Squeezing into the 128-man first round is in itself no easy task and one that is fraught with tricky obstacles .

And starting out on the rocky 128-man qualifying road at Flushing Meadows this week in a bid for two of the 16 places available in the main singles draw are South Africa's two leading players, Kevin Anderson and Rik De Voest.

Anderson and De Voest are the only South Africans who have made it into the qualifying rounds and, having achieved this, they must now win three testing games against tough opposition to reach next week's main singles draw.

Anderson, ranked 114th in the world, narrowly missed entry into the main draw and has been seeded second in the qualifying draw.

But even the first game of South Africa's number one player is no walk in the park, with Ecuador's Giovanni Lapentti, the brother of the better-known Nicolas Lapennti, standing in his way.

Anderson's sternest test in the qualifying segment, however, appears to be a potential match-up against Belgium's Xavier Malisse, a seasoned professional who has upset some of the top players in the world, in the third qualifying round.

De Voest's task is even more complicated, with second and third round qualifying games against the seasoned French pair of Edouard Roger-Vasselin and Thierry Ascione in the offing - and that only if South Africa's number two beats Italy's Alberto Brizzi in his first outing.

And emphasising the strength of the qualifying draw is the fact that it includes such accomplished campaigners as Chile's 2004 Olympic champion Nicolas Massu, Sergiy Stakhovsky of The Ukraine and Germany's Benjamin Becker.

- SAPA