A relatively unknown 23-year-old Slovenian tennis player, whose grandfather and mother were renowned Alpine skiers and slalom champions, this week put the skids on South Africa’s hopes in the vibrant Australian Open grand slam event in Melbourne.
Blaz Kavcic, a professed movie addict from the town of Ljubljana, wrote his own script, first disposing of long-time South African Davis Cup stalwart Rik De Voest 7-6 (3) 0-6 6-0 in the second qualifying round and then, even more significantly, accounted for South African number one and big hope Kevin Anderson 2-6 6-4 7-6 (5) 7-6 in a see-sawing opening round match of the tournament proper.
The 24-year-old, two-metre Anderson, who recently reached a career-best world ranking of 56th and raised eyebrows by beating the 31st-ranked Feliciano López in the Brisbane International tournament and giving the eighth-ranked world player, Andy Roddick, a run for his money in the semifinals, gave notice that he was a genuine contender for the R3,5-million South African Open title when the glittering event gets under way at Montecasino at the tail-end of this month.
Good-looking Spanish heart-throb López will be the defending champion and number one seed at the Open and beating a player of his calibre greatly enhanced the stature of Anderson — as well as providing tangible evidence that for the first time since the Wayne Ferreira era a South African can be considered to have a genuine chance of emerging the national tennis champion in his own country.
Despite the pinpricks to his aspirations provided by the cannonball serve of Kavcic (who idolises the legendary Pete Sampras and tries to emulate him), Johannesburg-born Anderson has a great deal going for him at Montecasino, where his big serve and knowledge of local conditions give him a distinct advantage.
Remember too that Montecasino provides Anderson with an ideal opportunity to revise the somewhat derogatory assessment of him in South Africa for not representing his country in the Davis Cup competition for more than two years when the country was crying out for his services in key World Group qualifying ties.
As was the case in the Australian Open, Anderson is the only South African directly accepted in the 32-man singles field. But unlike in the Melbourne event, South African participation will be enhanced by wild card entries handed to De Voest, Izak van der Merwe and Fritz Wolmarans — a common practice on the ATP international to bolster local participation.
Like Anderson the trio of more than competent international circuit participants will have the opportunity to perform beyond their tennis fighting weight by virtue of home-court advantage.
What is more, four places in the draw are made available from the qualifying segment of the tournament and there are two special exemptions at the disposal of the tournament director and South African Tennis Association chief executive Ian Smith that could bolster South Africa’s participation further.
For all this, López, an impressive South African Open winner last year, will start off as the tournament favourite. His left-handed serve and volley armoury is well suited to high altitude play and, like almost all Spaniards, he is no slouch from the baseline either.
Other players with a chance of annexing the title are the much-improved Yen-Hsun Lu from Taipei, who reached the quarterfinals at Wimbledon last year; Frenchman Jeremy Chardy, a South African Open finalist in 2009, and the colourful, eccentric but at times devastating Serb, Janko Tipsarevic.
The one lingering drawback that still confronts the South African Open is the back-to-back placing with the prestige Australian Open, which makes the inclusion of any of the world’s top 10 players at Montecasino a long-shot proposition.
But anyone who watched on TV the five-set epic in Melbourne between South African-bound Tipsarevic and the ninth-seeded Fernando Verdasco will be left with little doubt about the calibre of tennis that will be on display at Montecasino — a venue already ranked by the players on the ATP circuit as one of the most appealing of its kind.