Nigeria begins Davis Cup promotion race

Nigeria will start its quest for promotion to the World Group II of the Davis Cup as the quartet of Clifford Enosoregbe, Henry Atseye, Umaru Balami and Sylvester Emmanuel file out against their counterparts from Africa.
The event, which serves off Monday in Cairo, Egypt, will end on Saturday.

The players, alongside Coach Benson Isicheli, who is also a non-playing captain, departed Lagos on Saturday evening and arrived Cairo in the early hours of Sunday.

President of Nigeria Tennis Federation (NTF) Engr. Sani Ndanusa expressed confidence in the team, declaring that the players are ready for the challenge.

“From what we have seen of the players we can expect that we will have a good outing and possibly get one of the promotion tickets.

“The report I got from the camp shows that the team are well prepared having got used to clay court at the Lagos Country Club.

“Enosoregbe is one of the best ranked players by the ITTF and he showed a bit of what he has in stock at an exhibition match at Ikoyi Club on Friday. We can also count on the form of Atseye becasue he has been on top of his game in the last few years. So the NTF is confidence of the team getting a promotion ticket,” said Ndanusa, who is also the President of Nigeria Olympic Committee, NOC.

This is the sixth consecutive year that Nigeria will be playing in the Africa Group III after finishing as joint-seventh in the Africa Zone Group III positional play-off at the same venue last year.

The country’s best Davis Cup performances have been semi final finishes in Euro/Africa Zone Group I, in 1988 and 1989.