Changawa pumped up for action
Kenya’s top male tennis player Ismail Changawa is looking forward to the upcoming Euro Africa Group 3 Championships pencilled at home with great enthusiasm after recovering from an injury.
The four-time Kenya Open champion has already fired a warning shot to foreign opponents in the event scheduled for Nairobi Club in June.
Changawa is currently training with experienced foreign players at Muthaiga Club and he is oozing confidence that he will perform male.
“I’m training with some of the top tennis players and this will give me a learning experience to effectively compete with them ahead of the Davis Cup in a few months’ time. Obviously, this is a chance which I should embrace in my quest to call the shots on home soil,” said Changawa.
Among the experienced players the 25-year-old is training are Kenya’s own former Davis Cup player Devin Shretta, German Christian Vatta and Matthew Barton of Croatia.
Knee injury
Changawa’s recent biggest achievement was reaching the semi-finals of the Africa Cup of Nations in Tunisia last November,
However, he had to pay a price for the breakthrough during the match against home player Scander Manson after picking a knee injury which kept him out of action for some time.
Although Changawa maintains that he believes he has something up his sleeves to help Kenya’s cause in the Davis Cup, he reckons that he does not expect things to be any easier.
“Every country will be vouching for promotion to Group 2 not least Kenya, so I expect a very tough competition,” said Changwa who is also a multiple winner of the International Tennis Federation (ITF) Junior Circuit.
Changawa will be featuring in the event with the experience of having featured and won the Uganda Open, Rwanda Open and Malawi Open tournaments
Other members of Team Kenya in the Davis Cup are Kevin Cheruiyot, Albert Njogu, Ibrahim Kibet and Derrick Ominde.
Kenya will be angling for promotion in Group 2 after losing to Indonesia 5-0 in the play-offs in in Jakarta last year.
The teams expected in the championships include Algeria, Ghana, Benin, Madagascar, Mozambique, Rwanda and Egypt.
