Zimbabwe’s Davis Cup tennis team moved five places up from number 89 to position 84 out of 133 countries on the latest International Tennis Federation (ITF) Davis Cup by BNP Paribas world rankings released on Tuesday.
This is after the team of Takanyi Garanganga, Mark Fynn and Benjamin Lock finished joint third at the Europe-Africa Zone Group III tournament played in Cairo, Egypt recently where Zimbabwe missed promotion to Group II on the final hurdle.
Zimbabwe’s Davis Cup team missed out on promotion to the Europe-Africa Zone Group after losing to hosts Egypt at the Smash Tennis Academy in Cairo on Saturday night.
This was Zimbabwe’s second defeat in the tournament after they had earlier lost 2-1 to Algeria in Pool A but gained points after winning their other three matches against Ivory Coast (2-1), Kenya (3-0) and Ghana (3-0).
Zimbabwe are now ranked fifth on the continent behind South Africa who are the highest-placed African country in the world rankings at position 22 after beating Finland 3-0 in the Euro-Africa Group One Davis Cup to qualify for the competition’s World Group play-offs in September.
Morocco who dropped from 61 to 63, Egypt, who maintained number 66 and Algeria, who also remained at number 70 complete the top four in Africa.
Spain retained top spot, with Serbia remaining in second position while France were third and Argentina fourth, to complete the top four in the world.
The ITF Davis Cup nations ranking measures the success of all nations participating in the competition over a “rolling” four-year period with recent performances weighted more heavily.
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The ranking was launched at the end of 2001 to allow nations to see how they compare against each other in the competition.
A new rankings list is published following every World Group round and nations at all levels of the competition have a ranking.
The rankings are used for seeding in all the groups. However, the No 1 and No 2 seeds in the World Group are always the previous year’s finalists.
The Davis Cup by BNP Paribas is the largest annual international team competition in sport.
One of the cornerstones of the tennis year, this prestigious event gives players the chance to represent their country in an otherwise individual sport.
