Taiwan take on Kazakhstan in a Davis Cup tie this weekend, with the winners hanging on to their Asia/Oceania Group One place while a relegation playoff in September awaits the losers.
The Taiwanese team of Lu Yen-hsun, Chen Ti, Yang Tsung-hua and Lee Hsin-han can take some encouragement from Taiwan’s comfortable defeat of the same opponents on the last occasion the two met in the premier men’s team tennis competition in 2003.
Lu was part of the side that earned a 4-1 win in Taipei, beating Dias Doskaraev in the singles before teaming up with Jimmy Wang to win the doubles. He also lost a dead rubber to Alexy Kedryuk, part of the Kazakhstan team this weekend, along with Yuriy Schukin, Syrym Abdukhalikov and Dmitriy Makeyev.
Kedyruk, 27, is an experinced Davis Cup campaigner having also participated in the only other tie between the two teams in the Kazakhstani city of Almaty in 2000. Taiwan also won that match 4-1, but Kedyruk has a good overall record in the competition, winning a total of 63 singles and doubles rubbers and losing only 31.
The home team’s most dangerous opponent would appear to be Schukin, ranked 127 in the world in singles, and Taiwan have cause to be wary of a team which only narrowly lost to Thailand in their last Davis Cup tie in February.
Lu is the top ranked Taiwanese player at No. 114, with the rest of the players taking part in Almaty this weekend ranked outside the world’s top 200 in singles.
However 17-year-old Yang was a finalist at this year’s Australian Open boys singles and a winner in the boys doubles.
The defeated team in Almaty will play against the losers of this weekend’s tie between the Philippines and Uzbekistan in Manila.
The losers of that match will be relegated to Asia/Oceania Group 2, the regional second tier.
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