Taiwan take on Croatia in the Fed Cup today and tomorrow with the prize of a place in World Group II of tennis' premier team event for women up for grabs. This would leave the winners one level below the elite 8-team World Group, but for the losers a drop to Zonal Group I beckons.
An intriguing tie is in prospect in Split between two teams who appear to be evenly matched. The highest-ranked player on either side is Taiwan's Chan Yung-jan who is No.62 in the world in singles and No.10 in doubles. Croatia's top player, Jelena Konstanic Tosic, by contrast is No. 90 in singles and No.43 in doubles although she was ranked as high as No. 32 in singles and No. 30 in doubles in 2004.
In addition to Chan, Taiwan's squad includes Hsieh Su-wei, Chuang Chia-jung and Chan Chin-wei, all of whom have impressive Fed Cup pedigrees. Hsieh has racked up 9 wins and 5 defeats while Chuang is 14-7 in the competition. Chan Chin-wei's stats are the most impressive with 11 victories and only 3 defeats.
Taiwan earned their place in this weekend's World Group II play-offs as a result of a dominant performance at the Asia/Oceania Zonal competition in Auckland, New Zealand, earlier this year. The team went undefeated through the round-robin group beating Kazakhstan, Jordan, India and New Zealand before overcoming Thailand 3-0 to secure their play-off position. In fact, the team were so strong that in 15 matches they only dropped one rubber and that was a dead doubles against New Zealand.
Joining Kostanic Tosic for Croatia are the inexperienced trio of Nika Ozegovic, Ana Vrljic and Petra Martic who have one previous Fed Cup appearance between them. In contrast to Taiwan, the home side's latest Fed Cup venture ended in a comprehensive defeat at the hands of Germany when they went down 1-4 in Furth.
However, the Croats have home advantage and will benefit from playing on a red clay court, a surface that the Taiwanese players are much less familiar with.
The two sides will be meeting in the Fed Cup for the first time since Croatia began competing in the competition following the country's split from Yugoslavia in 1992.
World Group II play-off ties are contested in a best of five matches format, and are played across two days. On the first day there are two singles matches, and then the reverse singles matches take place on the following day. The final match is a doubles.
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