NZ Junior Davis Cup captain proud of team's efforts

New Zealand finished ninth in the Asia/Oceania Junior Davis Cup tournament in Kazakstan, beating Uzbekistan 2-1 in their final tie.

The team lost just one tie during the whole tournament, against Australia and defeated the No 3 seeds, Chinese Taipei, but narrowly missed out on advancing from the group stage into the quarterfinals on count back.

Against Uzbekistan Dan Milburn defeated Danila Kvasov 6-1 6-2,  Cody Atkinson lost to Sukhrob Saidov 3-6 7-5 10-8, then in the doubles Atkinson and Jack Jansen Ratter beat Akmal Abdullaev and Saidov 4-6 6-3 10-4.

New Zealand captain Artem Sitak, summed up that tie, and the week.

“It was a very good experience for me, for everyone, for the boys,” Sitak said. 

“It was great to see the level, great to watch the best players in Asia and Oceania play and see what needs to be done.

“It was an amazing effort from the whole team, an absolutely heartbreaking result in the group stages where we won two out of three ties, beating the third seeds, Chinese Taipei, but ended up not going through based on sets average. We didn’t go through by two sets, which isn’t a lot.

“So everyone was very disappointed and it was tough to get back into playing after that when we didn’t go through, but felt like we deserved to.

“But we did really well after that, winning another three ties, against Indonesia, Malaysia and then Uzbekistan in an absolute nail-biter.

“In the deciding doubles, we were down a set and a break and it was super cold, a lot of wind, super tough conditions. 

“We waited all day to play, everyone was tired, but I said ‘let’s find a way, this is where champions are made. We want to win this, so let’s find a way to win.’

“They did, they changed tactics and they found a way and ended up winning 10-4 in the super tiebreak, which was a great way to finish the week.

“We did everything right, we had great preparation in Australia, we did three full days on clay there before flying.

“We got here early, had four days of preparation here and we were ready to go.

“We saw that we were in the toughest group of the tournament and I feel like if we were put into any other group we would have got through to the quarterfinals.

“Our narrow loss to Australia by just a few points, that’s what made the difference.

“So we were unlucky, but it was a great experience overall and I’m looking forward to seeing what the boys do next.

“I’m going to follow their results, everyone played well and came up with big results when needed.

“I’m very proud of the whole team and I’m looking forward to what’s next.”