Tennis players know their place and are ‘back in the jungle’: ‘Perhaps it’s better that we are not favorites’ | Tennis

“It is a tennis jungle there and the format is completely different from what we were used to in recent years,” said captain Elise Tamaëla about playing in the European-African group 1. The Dutch have participated in the top of the country tournament in recent years, but partly due to the farewell of Kiki Bertens, the Netherlands has been thrown back quite a bit. “With this team and these rankings, this is where we belong. That’s okay, we have a nice team and we’re going to make something beautiful out of it,” says Tamaëla.

Antalya symbolizes the beginning of their tennis career for tennis players. Tournaments are organized almost weekly in the Turkish city. The tournaments are popular because the players who are at the beginning of their career can stay in the all-inclusive resorts for relatively little money.

,,It has been a very long time since I played there”, said Lesley Pattinama-Kerkhove. ,,I once played $10,000 tournaments there. It’s going to be a zoo with so many players in the same location. It will be very different from what we have had in the last eight years in the Billie Jean King Cup, with matches against one other country in beautiful stadiums and with a large crowd.”

Nevertheless, unlike Arantxa Rus and Arianne Hartono, Pattinama-Kerkhove made himself available for the Dutch team. ,,It’s not my favorite country to play in, because I don’t like to go that way. Moreover, I prefer to play as little as possible on clay,” said the number 198 in the world. “But maybe it’s a good thing that we don’t have the best players at our disposal, so we’re not the favourite.”

Due to the absence of Rus and Hartono, Bibiane Schoofs, who focuses on doubles, was called up again for the first time since 2019. Schoofs traveled to Antalya last year, hoping to play some matches after her umpteenth rehabilitation. ,,Then I lost in the first round and then I thought: what am I doing here? We all started as idlers and fought for a training job, but now as a team we come with a different approach.”

Today the players will hear the group classification. Eleven countries will be divided into two groups and the group winners will secure a place in the play-offs, just like the winner of the match between the numbers 2. ,,It will be very different from the recent meetings and physically it will be tough” , says Tamaela. ,,Some girls may play ten matches. We will bring two physios, they must have enough work to do.”