Belarusian tennis players defeated the Irish and went into a second round of the Davis Cup

As BELTA reports, in Dublin the tennis team of Belarus secured an overall victory over the team of Ireland after the second day of the first round of the Davis Cup second group of Euro-African zone.

On Saturday, March 7, the Belarusian duo of Alexander Bury (№788 in world ranking) and Sergei Betov (800) defeated James Cluskey (1186) and David O’Hare (1490) – 7:6 (9:7), 5:7, 6:3, 6:4. After the game, the score was 3:0 for Belarus.

On the first day of the competition the team of the Vladimir Volchkov, the captain of Belarusian team, with the assistance of Maxim Mirnyi, achieved two victories in single matches. First, Dmitri Zhyrmont (275) in a difficult three-hour match took the victory over Sam Barry (347) – 6:4, 6:7 (3:7), 7:6 (7:4), 6:2, and then Egor Gerasimov (246) defeated Daniel Glancy (933) – 6:2, 6:3, 6:3.

Thus, the results of the two single today matches are not very important for the tournament – but in any case the Belarusians will pass on. Today, Sam Barry and Egor Gerasimov are going to compete with each other, followed by Daniel Glancy and Dmitri Zhyrmont. According to the regulations of the Davis Cup team captains can make a substitutions.

Earlier the team of Belarus defeated the team of Ireland twice with the same score of 4:1 at the Davis Cup – in 1997 in Dublin and in 2014 in Minsk. A year ago, the Belarusian team was represented by Maxim Mirnyi, Dmitri Zhyrmont, Egor Gerasimov and Alexander Bury, the team of Ireland comprised of Daniel Glancy, James Cluskey and David O’Hare.

Belarus holds 56th place in the Davis Cup overall ranking, Ireland occupies 59th position. In the head of the list is Czech Republic, then goes Switzerland and the third place belongs to France.

In the next round, the team of Belarus is going to meet with the best team couple Turkey – South Africa in the middle of July. Now in this match after two days the Turks are losing to guests with the score of 1:2.

The rosters of other pairs of the first round of second group of Euro-African zone:
Latvia – Bulgaria,
Luxembourg – Madagascar,
Portugal – Morocco,
Monaco – Finland,
Zimbabwe – Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Hungary – Moldova.

The first time when the Belarusian tennis players played in team tournament was in May 1994 in the third group of Euro-African Zone and they immediately got into the second group. After 10 years of performance, the team of Belarus was awarded the right to participate among the 16 best teams in the world – the World Group of the Davis cup. The newcomers of the elite division made a hit getting into semifinals, defeating strong teams of Russia (3:2) and Argentina (5:0). However, Belarus didn’t manage to take over the team of USA, so they didn’t get to the finals losing with the score of 0:5 on the road game.

Translated by Alexey Sokolov, the student of the 4th year of Interpreting and Translation’s school, MSLU.