By Neto Baptiste
Antigua and Barbuda must make a concerted effort to get its best tennis players into as many tournaments across the globe as possible if we are to be competitive at international tournaments like the Davis Cup and others.
This is the assessment of President of the Antigua and Barbuda Tennis Association (ABTA) Cordell Williams, who said that presently, only professional player Jody Maginley, and to some extent, Cordell Williams Jr, can compete at that level.
“Antigua has two tennis players that can play at the highest level in Jody Maginley and Cordel Jr., and Cordell Jr’s school has been suspended from tennis, so he basically, just now and then goes on the court and hits with the girls because they still have a girls’ team. Jody, on the other hand, is a professional player, but the gap between CJ’s and Jody’s tennis is a wide gap, because one is a professional and one is a college player who is not playing enough tournaments. We need to get Cordell to start playing some more tournaments, and once we get that going, then we’d definitely have a good team but that third player and fourth player, in my view, should be two junior players we develop and get them on tour,” he said.
His statement comes on the heels of the country’s participation in group four of the competition in which they finished sixth from amongst nine teams in the Americas.
Williams said the level of play was good, highlighting that both teams that defeated Antigua and Barbuda have been promoted to group three.
“The two teams that we lost to, Bermuda and Honduras, they finished first and second in our group and then played first and second in the other group. They [the winners from our group] would have beaten the first and second teams in the other group, and so they would have been promoted to group three next year,” he said.
“All the other teams are still in group four and the bottom two teams from group three will be in group four next year, and each year the round-robin will continue and the top two teams will move up and the bottom two teams will move down so it’s an up and down situation,” he added.
Meanwhile, coach Carlton Bedminster commended the player for their efforts but highlighted professional Jody Maginley for the leadership role he played.
“I must say great job to Jody because he had to do something that only a few of us have ever done, which was to play He-Man as we played singles and doubles. He played throughout the week, but after playing twenty sets the body goes, but he did a great job holding it together especially in trying to keep team morale and everything. He started showing he is a senior person including Cejhae, Kyle and even Ron. We also ran into a problem where we had a full sick team including the president, so it was a tough week. It’s hard when you wake up in the morning and you don’t know if a player can play,” he said.
Antigua and Barbuda lost 2-1 to both Honduras and Bermuda but heat Haiti by a similar 2-1 margin. The twin-island state was represented by Jody Maginley, Cordell Williams Jr, Kyle Joseph and Ron Murraine with Bedminster as coach and Cordell Williams as Captain (manager).