Johannesburg-born Kevin Anderson, who plays Pablo Carreno Busta in the US\u2009Open semifinals, is the first South African to make the last four of a Grand Slam event since Wayne Ferreira at the 2003 Australian Open<\/p>\n
Kevin Anderson clinching a US Open men\u2019s singles semifinals showdown with Spaniard Pablo Carreno Busta in New York has given South African tennis a massive boost.<\/p>\n
Football, rugby and cricket dominate the sport scene in the republic, taking most of the sponsorship money and the media space.<\/p>\n
After defeating American Sam Querrey in the quarter- finals at Flushing Meadows, Anderson made the main sport page of many dailies.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a pleasant if unusual sight,\u201d Tennis South Africa (TSA) chief executive Richard Glover told AFP in Johannesburg.<\/p>\n
\u201cSouth Africans are used to seeing the back pages dominated by the \u2018big three\u2019 of football, rugby and cricket so it was nice to have positive tennis publicity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Glover hailed 31-year-old Florida-based Anderson for reaching the last four of a Grand Slam championship for the first time, saying that when it comes to publicity \u201cnothing beats on-court success\u201d.<\/p>\n
Johannesburg-born Anderson is the first South African to make the last four of a Grand Slam event since Wayne Ferreira at the 2003 Australian Open in Melbourne.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy phone almost exploded after Kevin won his quarter- final,\u201d chuckled Glover, who joined the national tennis body last year.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt rang non stop and, interestingly, it was non-tennis sport followers who were phoning to say how wonderful it was that Kevin had reached the semi-finals.\u201d<\/p>\n
Grand Slam semi-finals are uncharted territory for Anderson, who reached the last eight in New York two years ago but has never advanced beyond the fourth round at Melbourne, Roland Garros or Wimbledon.<\/p>\n
Like all South African sport bosses outside the \u201cbig three\u201d, Glover has the challenging task of wooing financial backers.<\/p>\n
He seems to possess a midas touch, however, having signed five sponsors, including local property and telecommunications giants and a South Korean car manufacturer.<\/p>\n
South Africa have adopted a bottom-up approach to tennis, concentrating on development to try and unearth more Kevin Andersons, who has three ATP titles to his credit.<\/p>\n
\u2018Renewed energy\u2019<\/p>\n
Once perceived as an elitist white sport, Glover would also love to find a South African Serena Williams, the black American who has dominated women\u2019s tennis for many years.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat white elitist perception might have been true to some extent in the past,\u201d conceded Glover, \u201cbut we are building development centres with the first due to open in Cape Town soon.\u201d<\/p>\n
TSA public relations consultant Bruce Davidson told AFP that Anderson could not have reached his first Grand Slam semi-final at a more opportune time.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese are challenging times economically in South Africa and the publicity generated by Kevin can only assist the sport.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis victories in New York have given renewed energy to all those involved with the sport from school level to academies and clubs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Johannesburg-born Kevin Anderson, who plays Pablo Carreno Busta in the US\u2009Open semifinals, is the first South African to make the last four of a Grand Slam event since Wayne Ferreira at the 2003 Australian Open Kevin Anderson clinching a US Open men\u2019s singles semifinals showdown with Spaniard Pablo Carreno Busta in New York has given […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4171,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4170"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4172,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4170\/revisions\/4172"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}