South Africa tennis

[zikmat]

Hello Tennis Fans !
A special question (for Crazy diamond especially) :
Are there any good and promising tennis player in South Africa to follow Wayne Ferreira's path as wayne is now retiring ??
I see that Wesley Moodie is having a good run in LA (but he is not a "young" player ...)

[chamacoo]

wolmarans' serve and volley is not bad at all. he's 17. 8)

[CrazyDiamond]

To be honest with you I cant think of any young players who can take over from Wayne.

South Africa has a great Tennis Tradition,but the day we gave up the SAfrican Open,was the day we started going downhill.

IMO what a player does as a Junior player is no indication of what he might do as a Pro.......so I wait to see the SAfrican youngsters hit the Satellites and then Challengers before I comment on how good they really are.

We have a lot of Golf Tournaments in South Africa now that we're part of the European Tour,and look at the results of our Golfers.
We can most probably put together one of the best if not the best 3 man team in the world.
Ernie,Retief Goosen,and Trevor Immelman can beat anyone.

If Wayne Ferreira gets involved in the running of SA tennis,then we have a future....at the moment we suck.

[Santorofan]

I'm also curious how big a deal recently retired Amanda Coetzer was in S.A. at her peak, as she was as high as #3 in the world in '97, defeating Graf three times that year.

Cliff Dysdale comes to mind also, as well as Virginia Wade (though she moved to England at age 15...)

[PeterUK]

Sa actually has some great youngsters coming up.

Wesley Moodie is my favorite, currently just outside the top 100 but will break through next year.

Rik De Voest, very fast and will probably come through in the next two years.

SA tennis has never looked so good.

[Andrew_Derer]

Does SA have Offical Language other then English? i heard they speak Afrikaans?

[BoughtMyPoints]

Does SA have Offical Language other then English? i heard they speak Afrikaans?

9 other official languages.


Outside of Kwazulu-Natal, Johannesburg, parts of Cape Town and a few other small places, Afrikaans is most widely spoken. It is the language of the agricultural economy and small town South Africa. The primary Afrikaans speakers almost all speak and understand English. There are primary English speakers in Cape Town and Johannesburg who refuse to use Afrikaans, otherwise most English speakers and many, many Africans use Afrikaans in everday use. There are, as well, 6 million or so mixed race people "The Coloureds" whose primary language is Afrikaans. There are distinct dialects in Afrikaans. South African English is distinguished by wildly different accents, ranging from a colonial type of pre war clipped English long out of style in Britain itself to a broad vernacular.

[Luke Cage]

wow, you should be a tour guide By the way why hasn't Whitehouse manged to break through after juniors. Does he not have the money to pay for coaches and travel abroad. There are so many junior champs who have succeeded on the pro tour. Even Elsner seems to break back in the top 100 and Gilles Muller has broken into for first time.

[etb76]

I played against a really good South African player in a grass court tourney the other week. He had a 130 mph serve, which on grass was rather impossible to return. His name is Ian Samuels...but don't look for him on the pro circuit...he decided to be a teaching pro in England instead. Moodie is really good depsite his 150 ranking.