T&T’s Davis Cup men got their cam­paign off in the Davis Cup Amer­i­c­as Zone Group IV match-up against Aru­ba at the Na­tion­al Rac­quet Cen­tre (NRC) in Or­ange Grove, Tacarigua to an un­favourable start on court 5 on Mon­day.

A 3-0 loss to the Arubans meant that the T&T quar­tet of Lu­ca Sham­si, Ebolum N’woko­lo, Ak­ile Duke and Nabeel Mo­hammed will have some work to do in Group B of the Davis Cup, which apart from the two teams, will in­clude the Puer­to Ri­cans, Nicaragua and Haiti.

Mo­hammed, in the open­ing rub­ber, trailed in both sets, amidst hopes of giv­ing the home team a good start, but up against Kyle Frankel, the coun­try’s num­ber #1 play­er, he could not keep up, los­ing in the first set 1-6.

The oth­er set was al­most a car­bon copy of the first that Mo­hammed sur­ren­dered 2-6 to hand the Arubans a 1-0 ad­van­tage af­ter the first match.

Trail­ing at the end of the first game, T&T sought to re­pair the dam­age from Sham­si, who, un­like Mo­hammed, had an un­blem­ished record in the men’s sin­gles the last time the coun­try con­test­ed the Davis Cup.

But it was no com­fort for the T&T team. Sham­si, the ris­ing T&T ten­nis tal­ent, went down in the first set 4-6 to the Aruban sec­ond-ranked play­er Patrick Sydow. And he need­ed to win the oth­er set to force a third, but it was not to be for him on the day.

By the same mar­gin, Sham­si was de­feat­ed to hand the Arubans the win with an al­ready com­fort­able 2-0 ad­van­tage.

Coach Dun­stan De­noon lat­er brought in Ak­il Duke to team up with Mo­hammed for the dou­bles that fol­lowed, against Fred­er­ick Sydow and his name­sake Patrick Sydow. To­geth­er the pair of Duke and Mo­hammed, the two lo­cal play­ers who jumped in­to the ITF world rank­ings af­ter the ITF pro­fes­sion­al tour­na­ments in April, were off to a pos­i­tive start with a 1-0 ad­van­tage that lat­er went to 3-2.

They, how­ev­er, could not sus­tain the pres­sure and the Sydow pair ran away with the open­ing set 6-3.

There­after, there was lit­tle re­sis­tance to curb the Aru­ba pair who lat­er pre­vailed 6-2.

Coach Dun­stan De­noon said af­ter­wards, “To­day, it was some first-day tour­na­ment jit­ters be­cause we haven’t played in a while, but I ex­pect go­ing for­ward, to see more re­spon­si­ble ten­nis and the play­ers’ more at ease.

“To­mor­row (to­day) will be El­bolum’s first day, so he may go through what the oth­er play­ers went through to­day (yes­ter­day). All in all, al­though we did not win, I am very hap­py with the at­ti­tude that the play­ers’ dis­played. There is a say­ing if you lose don’t lose the les­son, so in go­ing for­ward I think every­body kind of un­der­stands what is re­quired go­ing for­ward and if they can do that, then time will tell, but at least they have a very pos­i­tive dis­po­si­tion as far as I am con­cerned,” De­noon said.

The T&T team will to­day face Haiti at 10 am on court 6, and in the oth­er match in the group, Aru­ba will take on Nicaragua.

Mean­while, in an­oth­er Group B en­counter on Court 11, Puer­to Ri­co de­feat­ed Nicaragua 2-1 to take the top po­si­tion in the group. Nicaragua drew first blood in the match when Fran­cis­co Ben­dana (NIC) turned back Marko Mesarovic of Puer­to Ri­co in straight sets 6-4 6-4. How­ev­er, Gabriel Evan (P/Ri­co) lev­elled the scores with a flaw­less 6-0, 6-0 tri­umph over Al­fre­do Gal­le­gos (NIC) to set up a mouth-wa­ter­ing af­fair in the dou­bles.

The Puer­to Ri­can pair of Jake Fel­lows and Noah Her­nan­dez then sealed the win by de­feat­ing the team of An­dres Ben­dana and Fran­cis­co Ben­dana 6-1 and 6-1.