Pacific Oceania faces seeded Lebanon today

Pacific Oceania kicks off its tie with seeded Lebanon in the first round of the Asia/Oceania Group 2 Davis Cup today at the Dr. Robin Mitchell Regional Tennis Centre in Lautoka, Fiji.

Lebanon is No. 57 in the 142-nation Davis Cup rankings and has three of its four players ranked in both the singles and doubles divisions of the International Tennis Federation event.

Top seed Jicham Zaatani has a singles ranking of 1,089 and a doubles ranking of 1,122. The 29-year-old Maracay, Venezuela-born netter also has compiled a 20-14 record in Davis Cup competition.

Patrick Chucri is expected to occupy the No. 2 spot for the Middle East country. The 23-year-old Beirut native is ranked 1,478 in singles and 1,280 in the doubles. The 6’2” Chucri has a 7-11 record in Davis Cup play.

Karim Alayli is the youngest of the bunch at 21 years old. He is just a few places below Chucri in the singles rankings and is 1,779 in doubles. But unlike Chucri, Alayli has yet to notch a win in seven Davis Cup matches.

The oldest and most experienced netter for Lebanon also happens to be its playing team captain, Hussein Badreddine. The 33-year-old has compiled an 11-9 record in Davis Cup competition but last played in 1995, which explains his absence in the singles and doubles rankings.

Pacific Oceania, which returned to Group 2 play after an impressive performance in last year’s Group 3 competition in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, would be the underdogs coming into the tie with Lebanon.

Pacific Oceania is ranked 77th in the Davis Cup competition with the team in Fiji probably the youngest squad ever assembled by Pacific Oceania with a median age of 20.75, compared to 26.5 for the Lebanese.

But what the team gives away in age in experience, it surely makes up for in spunk and exuberance.

Although none of team captain Jeff Race’s players register as much as a blimp in the singles and doubles rankings of the Davis Cup, the long-time Davis Cup campaigner from the CNMI has three of them bringing in winning records to the competition.

Juan Langton of Western Samoa more likely will assume the No. 1 seed for the islanders, as he has a sterling 16-8 record in Davis Cup play. The 21-year-old won a medal in the 2003 South Pacific Games in Suva, Fiji.

At 23, Brett Baudinet of Cook Islands is the oldest among the players and Race looks to him the most to stabilize the team. The doubles specialist brings a respectable 13-11 record against Lebanon and packs one of the meanest serves in the region.

Cyril Jacobe of Vanuatu rejoins the team after a two-year absence from the Davis Cup. The 21-year-old has a 5-8 record in Davis Cup play and is more suited playing in clay.

Eighteen-year-old Michael Leong of Solomon Islands is the most promising netter to come out of Pacific Oceania in recent memory and this was evident in his first Davis Cup tie last year, when he logged an impressive 4-1 record in Vietnam. He is expected to play the wild-card role for Race against Lebanon.

The first round tie between Pacific Oceania and Lebanon will be played over three days at the 250-person capacity plaxipave hardcourt. Two singles matches will be played today starting at 10:10am (8:10am in the CNMI), one doubles on Saturday starting at 1pm (11am), and finally two reverse singles on Sunday beginning 10am (8am).