Starting, this cup is like a world cup of tennis but for women, maybe is a little underrated, but for me it’s a really interesting competition, especially those the Group I, why? Simple, this group doesn’t have a lot of stars or top players, but most of the players here are ascending players who are representing her country and trying to keep climbing to reach to the top, or semi-consolidates players (inside the 300th of the world) they are focused on defend her colors, that’s what we are going to see in this group.
Let’s begin, this group is composed by seven countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Guatemala, Paraguay and Venezuela) divided in two pools, where they have to play against each other to find a place in the world group and stay away from de relegation to group 2.
The Groups
Pool A: Chile, Colombia, Paraguay
Pool B: Argentina, Brazil, Guatemala, Venezuela
At this moment, the groups have already finished and only those in the promotion play-off, the 3rd to 4th play-off and the relegation play-off, are left to compete, but lets keep in the groups, that is what are we going to talk about.
Pool A
Paraguay (Clearly the favorite of the group) composed by:
Veronica Cepede Royg (26 years, Singles Ranking 84, Doubles Ranking 180)
Monserrat Gonzalez (23 years, Singles Ranking 366, Doubles Ranking 288)
Camila Giangreco (21 years, Singles Ranking 514, Doubles Ranking 485)
Lara Escauriza (19 years, Singles Ranking 958, Doubles Ranking 568)
Chile, composed by:
Daniela Seguel (25 years, Singles Ranking 199, Doubles Ranking 144)
Fernanda Brito (25 years, Singles Ranking 355, Doubles Ranking 430)
Alexa Guarachi (27 years, Singles Ranking 414, Doubles Ranking 145)
Daniela Macarena Lopez (20 years, Singles Ranking 991, Doubles Ranking 905)
Colombia, composed by:
Maria Fernanda Herazo (20 years, Singles Ranking 438, Doubles Ranking 379)
Emiliana Arango (17 years, Singles Ranking 506)
Maria Paulina Perez-Garcia (22 years, Singles Ranking 1186, Doubles Ranking 889)
Juliana Valero (20 years, Singles Ranking 1217, Doubles Ranking 1314)
The results:
07 Feb Paraguay 3 - 0 Colombia
Monserrat Gonzalez - Emiliana Arango 64 63
Veronica Cepede Royg - Maria Fernanda Herazo 62 64
Cepede Royg/Gonzalez - Arango/Herazo 61 62
08 Feb Paraguay 2 - 1 Chile
Monserrat Gonzalez - Alexa Guarachi 63 57 75
Veronica Cepede Royg - Daniela Seguel 67(6) 46
Cepede Roy/Gonzalez - Guarachi Seguel 57 63 62
09 Feb Chile 0 - 3 Colombia
Alexa Guarachi - Emiliana Arango 26 67(4)
Daniela Seguel - Maria Fernanda Herazo 26 46
Brito/Lopez - Arango/Valero 67(7) 76(5) 46
But looking deeply in the results, there are some interesting players in this groups, starting whit the Paraguayan star Veronica Cepede Royg, who had a wonderful 2017 reaching the fourth round of the Roland Garros, losing in a 3 set match against Karolina Pliskova (2nd seed on that tournament and the world number 5), and being active the mostly part of the year playing a lot of tournaments who gave her a pretty good ranking.
Talking about interesting players, all the Colombian team is a revelation, a team composed of really young players (averaging 19.75 years), and even a junior, and defeating Chile in a really close encounter, Herazo and Arango are players to keep an eye on.
Specially Emiliana Arango, a junior who is number 506 of the world (and climbing), a girl who have been playing tennis since 3 years old, almost all her life, being the former number 8 of the world in the junior ranking, and having another year to keep competing on that level, but clearly she is more worried about her professional career and maybe she is reducing her junior calendar to play more WTA tournaments, remember my words, she is going to be big in the future, she have a big potential and is ready for the big things.
Talking about Chilean team, is a more experienced team, composed by players who knows the circuit and knows how to win in this kind of competition, surprisingly they lose both encounters in a really close way but having the chance to stay in the Group I just winning the relegation play-off match against the third of the pool B.
In the second part of this article we're going to talk about pool B and the promotional play-off, the 3rd to 4th play-off and the relegation play-off all of the matches are going to be tomorrow 10 Feb at La Asuncion, Paraguay
All the information on this post is coming from the official pages of Fed Cup , WTA (Women's Tennis Association) and the ITF (International Tennis Federation)
ALR
Tennis player for a long time