Park out-of-bounds for pair

Press, 11 January 1984, Page 32

Park out-of-bounds for pair

By

JOHN BROOKS

New Zealand tennis officials are determined not to let two Paraguayans steal a march on the home team before the Davis Cup tie at Wilding Park next month.

The powerful pair of Victor Pecci and Francisco Gonzalez are expected to descend on Christchurch at least 12 days before the tie, which is scheduled to start on February 24. But under Davis Cup

rules visiting teams are not entitled to practise at the match venue until eight days before the tie. Mr lan Wells, the executive president of the New Zealand Lawn Tennis Association, yesterday pledged his body’s resolve to hold the Paraguayans to this agreement.

“We won’t let them near the stadium until that time even if they come early,” Mr Wells said. “There are other grass courts around Christchurch, though.”

The visitors will obviously desire extensive grass court practice, because both Gonzalez and Pecci are known chiefly as clay court players. It is expected that they will play all the matches between them, for the only other member of the Paraguayan party is Alberto Gross Brown, who has been named as player-cap-tain.

No-one in New Zealand Lawn Tennis Association

circles has heard of Brown, and his name does not appear in any of the official international tennis publications.

Pecci and Gonzalez are both aged 28 and stand 6ft 4in in their socks. Consistently ranked in the world’s top 70 players since 1974, Pecci is now 55th, after recovering from a broken tailbone 18 months ago. Gonzalez has ranking of 112, but, more significantly, he and Pecci form one of

the world’s top doubles teams with respective rankings of 31 and 33 (players are ranked individually on their doubles results).

The New Zealand team will not be announced until January 23, the day after the national championships end in Wellington. Chris Lewis and Russell Simpson are certain to be included, with the Auckland left-hand-ers, David Mustard and Bruce Derlin, as back-up players.