Australia Wins the Austria Cup!

Final report from 2009 Seniors World Teams Championships

Robyn Castle (with acknowledgement to Tom Hancy), 10-May-2009

For the fifth successive year, Australia has won the Austria Cup (55+) at the ITF Cups competition in Mallorca. In the final against hot opposition in the French team, Gary Thoroughgood (NSW), won the first rubber against Bruno Renoult 64 75, while stalwart Andrew Rae (Vic) dropped his match against Marc Renoult 26 26. It was left to the pairing of Thoroughgood and Michael Collins (Vic) to win the third set of the doubles 64 46 61. A great team effort!

In the Maria Bueno Cup (50+), Australia suffered an unexpected 1-2 loss to Great Britain in the semi finals. Ros Balodis (ACT) won her match 62 62 after Kaye Nealon (ACT) lost the first rubber 26 06. Ros and Kaye surprisingly went down in the Doubles. Great Britain went on to win this event by upsetting the highly fancied favourites, the USA who had not dropped a set until the final. In the play off for third, and without Ros Balodis who suffered a knee injury, Australia defeated France with both Kaye and Helen Webb (NSW) teaming to win the deciding doubles in a tie break third set after Kaye won her singles 64 64 and Helen lost 36 26.

The other team who gave the Aussie spectators some hope was the Fred Perry team of Glenn Busby (Vic), Mike Ford (Qld) and Bruce Osborne (Vic) who won through to the semi finals losing to Germany who lost to the USA in the final. In the play off for third the Australians had to be content with fourth place losing to Austria 1-2.

In the Connolly Cup (55+), Helen Worland (NSW), Wendy Gilchrist (Qld) and Adrienne Avis (NSW) defeated France in the play off for fifth place. The only match they lost all week was to Spain in the Round Robin section, which put them out of the “top four” – and Spain ended up with the Silver medal.

Against extremely strong opposition, some teams put up creditable performances. It is very difficult to finish in the top eight teams, particularly in the men’s competition, if you drop a match in the early round robins.

Overall results