Davis Cup Tennis in Ramat Hasharon

Its not often there are "big" sporting events in Israel and it is not often Israel excels and causes a whitewash and it is not often that rain stops play in Israel. So I had the privilege of seeing all of this as Israel took on Luxembourg in the Davis Cup tournament in Canada Stadium at Israel's main tennis centre in Ramat Hasharon. Luxemburg is by no means a tennis nation they have one player ranked in the mid 100's of the ATP equivalent to the two Israeli single players and the rest of the team are ranked way out in the 1000's. So the excitement was there as a few thousands supporters packed the stands. Off it went, the powerhouse and Israeli number one Noam Okum cruised past his opponent losing one game only in the third set. Then it was the more evenly matched Dudu Sela (who was in good form from the Australian Open) taking on the Luxembourg number one. By that time, like two hours into the day the crowd was restless, either the Israeli crowd were so excited to have some good live professional sport or they just did not know how to behave or letting in lots of unsupervised youths is a bad idea. You be the judge! But I have never sat at a tennis game where the crowd throws paper jets onto the court and get up and walk around during points! Quite the experience, anyway, Sela was in good form and had the upper hand when rain stopped play, the next two days Israel won all their other games setting up a convincing whitewash victory!

Senior Zimbabwean Davis Cup supporter and once a week player in Israel, Hilton Burke, gets mesmerized by top Israeli female player Shahar Peer (front left) in the blue cap.