T&T’s Davis Cup cap­tain Dun­stan De­noon says he was pos­i­tive about the progress made by his team dur­ing the 2025 Davis Cup Amer­i­c­as Zone Group IV Tour­na­ment, which end­ed at the Na­tion­al Rac­quet Cen­tre in Or­ange Grove, Tacarigua, on Sat­ur­day.

Com­pet­ing in the ten-team tour­na­ment, at the end of which the top two teams gained pro­mo­tion to Group Three, the T&T team, cap­tained by An­tho­ny Williams and in­clu­sive of Lu­ca De­noon, Zach­ery Byng, Vaughn Wil­son and Kam­ran McIn­tosh-Ross, just missed out on se­cur­ing pro­mo­tion af­ter they were swept aside 2-0 by the Ba­hamas in their play­off en­counter.

With the win­ners of the tie se­cur­ing pro­mo­tion to Group Three, T&T (3-1), who fin­ished run­ner-up to Guatemala (4-0), had high hopes of fi­nal­ly emerg­ing from the low­er tier of the com­pe­ti­tion.

How­ev­er, in the open­ing match, T&T’s Kam­ran McIn­tosh-Ross was beat­en for on­ly the sec­ond time in Davis Cup sin­gles af­ter he was hum­bled by Donte Arm­bris­ter 3-6, 3-6 to leave the host trail­ing 1-0 in the best-of-three tie.

Ba­hami­an De­nali Not­tage crushed Vaughn Wil­son, who cel­e­brat­ed his 33rd birth­day on Fri­day, 6-2 6-4.

In the round-robin group stage, T&T opened their cam­paign with a 2-1 win over Haiti but then went un­der to Guatemala 0-3 be­fore re­bound­ing to de­feat St Lu­cia 2-1 and the US Vir­gin Is­lands by a sim­i­lar 2-1 mar­gin for the run­ner-up spot in the five-team Pool A be­fore go­ing un­der to Pool B win­ners, the Ba­hamas, 2-0 in their pro­mo­tion play­off en­counter, while Pool A win­ner Guatemala se­cured the oth­er pro­mo­tion spot af­ter beat­ing Pool B run­ner-up Cu­ba by a sim­i­lar 2-0 mar­gin.

Speak­ing at the awards cer­e­mo­ny held at Decky’s at One Wood­brook Place, Wood­brook, on Sat­ur­day night, an up­beat De­noon said, “We just re­cent­ly con­clud­ed the Amer­i­ca’s Group Four com­pe­ti­tion, where we came third, and it is the first time in many years that we were play­ing for pro­mo­tion.

“So, it’s quite an im­prove­ment for the last few years as well, and as a team we have been show­ing im­prove­ment and pro­gress­ing.”

De­noon was full of praise for his play­ers and the tech­ni­cal team for the ef­forts they put in dur­ing the course of the tour­na­ment, say­ing, “I want to thank the mem­bers of my team for work­ing re­al­ly hard. I’d like to thank the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T (Sportt) and the Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs for giv­ing us the fund­ing to make sure that we had a good event and to have the team tak­en care of. With that in­vest­ment, the re­sults tend to come once every­one is fo­cused and to­geth­er.

He added, “I’d al­so like to thank the lo­cal or­gan­is­ing com­mit­tee of the Ten­nis As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T for putting this event to­geth­er.

Look­ing ahead, De­noon said a lot more com­pe­ti­tion is need­ed at home for the play­ers to get their lev­el up to a high­er stan­dard.

“We need to in­crease our ca­pac­i­ty by hav­ing a lot more com­pe­ti­tions be­cause we have a fa­cil­i­ty where we can ac­tu­al­ly bring in play­ers in­stead of ship­ping our play­ers out for train­ing.”

In ref­er­ence to the Na­tion­al Rac­quet Cen­tre, he said, “We have a fa­cil­i­ty where we ac­tu­al­ly can play at the court. It’s good to be able to train and play there at the same time.

“So, I would say that we need to look at im­port­ing play­ers and have more com­pe­ti­tions to sharp­en our skill sets right here in T&T.

“We have Kam­ran McIn­tosh-Ross and Vaugh­an Wil­son along with a cou­ple of young play­ers, and the plan is that even if we have younger play­ers, hav­ing them train with the team will help us to build ca­pac­i­ty, but more specif­i­cal­ly for the team, hav­ing a pair of dou­bles play­ers would be very im­por­tant be­cause, as you would see, we had our sin­gles play­ers play­ing dou­bles in the cru­cial mo­ments, and I would say to add depth, we ac­tu­al­ly have to get maybe one more sin­gles play­er as a back­up so we can have three sin­gles play­ers and two dou­bles play­ers that are spe­cial­ists, which will im­prove our chances in match­es.”

Last year, al­so play­ing at home, T&T fin­ished fourth in Pool B round-robin play at Tacarigua and was then beat­en by Haiti in their sev­enth-place play­off.

T&T last played in the Amer­i­c­as Zone Group II in 2002 af­ter do­ing so pre­vi­ous­ly in 1990 and 1991.

Speak­ing af­ter the tie, T&T Ten­nis As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Hay­den Mitchell said he was still proud of the per­for­mance of the na­tion­al play­ers.

“We didn’t achieve our ob­jec­tive, which was to gain pro­mo­tion to Group Three for next year, but look­ing back on the match­es, these were by far some of our best per­for­mances in re­cent mem­o­ry.

“Next year, we will be com­pet­ing in Group Four once again, but we will al­so have the avail­abil­i­ty of Amer­i­can-born Dil­lon Beck­les to play for us.”

Beck­les, 19, who was born to a Trinida­di­an fa­ther, was hop­ing to be part of the team for this year’s tour­na­ment, but due to tour­na­ment rules, he was un­able to do so be­cause he un­for­tu­nate­ly didn’t get his T&T pass­port in the stip­u­lat­ed time.