South Africans Chris Haggard and Robbie Koenig made up for their disappointment at being left out of the Olympic team by winning the doubles title at the Legg Mason Tennis Classic in Washington on Sunday night.
Haggard and Koenig defeated American Travis Parrott and Russian Dmitry Tursunov 7-6 (7-3) 6-1 to claim the winners’ trophy.
On their way to the title the South African duo put out top seeds Lucas Arnold and Mariano Hood of Argentina 6-3 2-6 7-6 (7-5) in the quarterfinals and third seeds Martin Garcia and Sebastian Prieto, also of Argentina, 6-3 7-6 (7-3).
In June, the South African Tennis Association put forward the names of Haggard and Jeff Coetzee as well as Haggard and Koenig as the South African doubles team for Athens, but the National Olympic Committee of South Africa (Nocsa) refused to sanction the entry as it claimed any South African pair would have needed a wild card to get into the tournament and under their rulings, wild cards were not acceptable.
However, Nocsa’s total lack of understanding of the International Tennis Federation’s (ITF) rules cost South Africa’s highest-ranked player, Haggard, and either Coetzee or Koenig a shot at a medal in Athens.
The ITF only invited the top 10 players in the 32-team draw. The rest of the field was made up of nominations from the respective countries’ federations and entry into the tournament was based on ranking. The ITF did leave eight positions open for what it termed ”ITF placings”, which in essence were wild cards, but they would also be based on rankings and geographical areas.
As it transpired the South Africans would have earned a direct entry into the Olympics had Nocsa just signed the entry and would not have needed an ”ITF placing”.
Hindsight has just proved how shortsighted Nocsa was with its decision, for had every Olympic committee used the same formula as Nocsa, none of the three medallists would have made it into the Olympics.
Mario Ancic and Ivan Ljubicic of Croatia won the bronze medal with a joint ranking of 140 and they were an ”ITF placing”, Germany’s Rainer Schuettler and Nicolas Kiefer took silver with a joint ranking of 89 and Chileans Fernando Gonzalez and Nicolas Massu, who won gold, have a joint ranking of 103.
Haggard, on 30, is higher-ranked than any of the doubles players who won medals while he and Coetzee combined would have been on 89, the same as the Germans.
Nocsa obviously needs to have entry criteria to keep standards high but it also needs to work closely with official sporting bodies to create a better understanding of the rules.
Their statement that Haggard and Coetzee or Haggard and Koenig were not medal prospects was proved to be nonsense on the tennis courts of Athens.
As Haggard said: ”The saddest part is that tennis is a major sport and South Africa will not even have one representative in Athens.”
Tennis is renowned for upsets … just ask Roger Federer and Andy Roddick. — Sapa