The Renault South Africa team are confident of their chances, despite playing away from home, after being drawn to face North Macedonia in the Davis Cup World Group II playoffs next year.
In the draw held on Monday, North Macedonia were announced as the hosts of the tie to be played in the first week of February 2027.
The home team were set to announce the venue at a later stage, but Renault South Africa captain Pietie Norval said he expected the fixture to be contested on a clay surface.
The SA squad are in 59th place in the Davis Cup rankings and North Macedonia are ranked 78th, but Norval felt the visitors would need to be at their best in foreign conditions.
“Their players perform on clay courts most of the time, and with the tie being away we can almost assume it’s going to be on clay. We’re not sure yet but it probably will be,” Norval said.
“They’ve got two good players. They’ve got a player ranked 452 in the world (Oleg Prihodko) and another one ranked 749 (Kalin Ivanovski) who have gotten most of their results on clay, so if it is on clay they would have a strong team.”
In their latest tie, the SA team lost 4-0 against Bosnia and Herzegovina at Irene Country Club in Centurion earlier this month.
Aiming to retain their place in World Group II, Norval said the South Africans were also looking further ahead, in the hopes of putting themselves in contention for a spot in the World Group I playoffs within the next couple of years.
“We’ll have to do some good planning and prepare to possibly play these guys (North Macedonia) on their favourite surface,” Norval said.
“I feel we’ve got a chance, and hopefully most of our players will be healthy and available to play this tie, and then we can give it a shot to see if we can get ourselves in another good position in September next year to have another playoff match to go up.
“That’s our plan, and to ultimately progress to a playoff for World Group I, which is what we tried this time (against Bosnia). We didn’t quite pull it off, but we’ll give it another shot next year, and hopefully we’ll be ready.”