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9/14/08 1:09 PM | Johan Lindahl
Australian Davis Cup captain John Fitzgerald has been thrown a bureaucratic lifeline after Dutch-born Robert Smeets finally got his long-sought Australian passport.
The rush job will allow the No. 147 to join the Aussie cause on a long-odds Davis Cup relegation battle in Chile next weekend with the visitors missing their only world-class player in Lleyton Hewitt.
The former No. 1 is recovering from hip surgery and will not return to the game until next year. John Fitzgerald player profile" style="border-bottom: 1px dotted #000">Fitzgerald will be fielding a rag-tag group led by Chris Guccione and Pete Luczak, with No. 80 Guccione the highest-ranked member of a squad populated by first-timers.
Smeets, 22, with one career ATP victory, has spent almost half his life in Australia but was never able to fulfill the requirement of living a certain number of months in the Lucky Country due to his tennis travel.
But sports-loving mandarins in the capital of Canberra must have been somehow persuaded, as the previous passport was suddenly put through in record time with the Davis Cup clock ticking.
Joining Guccione on the weak squad are rookies Carsten Ball and Sam Groth.
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Australia needs all the players they can get! They aren't going to get good players until the courts around the country are changed from "astro-turf" to hard courts and clay. That is a whole different can of worms ...
BernieEliza , 9/15/08 5:29 AM