Turkmen tennis players have advanced to the semifinals of the U16 Davis Cup Juniors - Asia Oceania Pre-Qualifying Event, currently taking place in Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka, with the participation of 15 teams. This notable achievement was secured today after a 2–0 victory over the fifth-seeded team from the Philippines in the quarterfinals.
The winning score in the match was opened by Suleyman Hudayberdiyev, a student of Specialized Secondary School No. 86 in Ashgabat, who confidently defeated Brendan Zachary Morales in the first singles match, 6–1, 6–2, in just 1 hour and 15 minutes.
In the second match, Filipino player Lucas Sebastian Go made a strong effort to save the tie. From the outset, he put up a serious fight against Ali Geldiyev, taking the first set in a tie-break, 7–6(5). The day before, the 14-year-old student of the Ashgabat School for Training Young Olympians had played an exhausting match lasting over three hours against a representative from Singapore—an effort after which not every athlete can quickly recover under a tight schedule. However, Ali did not lose heart after dropping the first set and once again demonstrated excellent physical conditioning, which helped him turn the match around and clinch victory in the next two sets, 6–4, 6–4, in a contest that lasted 3 hours and 2 minutes.
After losing both singles matches, the Filipino team withdrew from the doubles match, as its outcome no longer had any bearing on determining the winner.
This marks the fourth victory for the Turkmen tennis players in the DCJ Asia Oceania Pre-Qualifying Event. Earlier, they had successively defeated the teams of Oman (3–0), Myanmar (2–1), and Singapore (2–1), finishing first in Group B. Now, the Turkmen junior team—also featuring strong doubles player Kerimgeldi Guldurdyyev, who took part in key matches—has reached the top four teams of the tournament. This success is largely due to both the players’ personal coaches and 31-year-old coach-instructor of the Turkmenistan Higher School of Sports Mastery, Gurbanberdi Gurbanberdiyev, who serves as the team captain during the preliminary qualification round.
In the semifinal, Turkmenistan will face the third-seeded team from Vietnam, which topped Group D in the initial stage, defeating Nepal, Mongolia, and the Pacific Oceania team all by identical 3–0 scores, and then secured a comeback victory in the quarterfinals over the fourth-seeded Saudi Arabia team, 2–1.
It should be noted that the Davis Cup Juniors was launched by the International Tennis Federation (ITF) in 1985 as a world competition for boys under 16, and in 2002 it was renamed to its current title. Each year, countries compete in regional qualifying events, with the winners advancing to the finals to compete for the championship title.
