01-15-2023, 07:59 PM
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#1360
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Pro Starter
Join Date: Jan 2011
Location: Madison, WI
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Brian Swartz
It's still Greece and everyone else at the top; the gap is still growing as long as nobody can knock them off. As for us, we will follow up our year off from the World Team Cup by ...
... getting another one, as expected. There was one new country admitted this year, Zimbabwe, which may interest a certain reader. They deserve it, with Meligqili Banana a rising youngster, 20 years old and ranked 78th. Even with only one other player in the Top 1000, that was enough to get them in. Other last-place finishers we could have potentially replaced:
- Ukraine, who lost three times by 3-2 and has two singles players in the 300-400 range. I'd have kept them in over us also.
- Japan, who impressively found a way to lose every.single.rubber at Level 4. They hang around probably based on the fact that they still have Tsuramatsu Ashara, ranked 209th. Srivastava basically cancels him out though, and he's the only player they have in the Top 800 so we'd still have an argument. They were just relegated from Level 3 a year ago, so maybe they are giving them some time.
Or they only wanted to make one change, and Zimbabwe is it.
Or they just don't like our stupid face.
Or they want us to wait longer than a year before reconsidering our case.
Or they decided to consult the bones, and odds were never in our favor.
Whatever the case, it's admittedly a close call this year and I can't in all honesty claim I would have chosen differently. I probably would have reviewed our application and said something like 'if they keep making progress, next year'.
If we don't get in next year though in a similar situation, I will spit tacks. Which will accomplish precisely jack squat. For now, we just need to be as ready as we can be whenever the time comes. And coming up soon, of course, are the usual start-of-year wall-of-text updates.
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Sorry if this seems like Banana cut your place in line! Though I have to say your earlier predicted criterion of having a top-100 player seems just about dead on...
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