Hong Kong were left looking for more after booking their berth in the second round of the Davis Cup Asia/Oceania Zone Group Two competition by comfortably winning the doubles to take a 3-0 lead over Tajikistan yesterday. Asif Ismail and John Hui combined well to defeat Sergei Makashin and Dilshod Sharifi 6-1, 6-1, 6-2 in another one-sided encounter at Victoria Park to give Hong Kong an unbeatable lead. But having feasted on this lightweight opposition, the Hong Kong camp looked a trifle dissatisfied that the banquet had ended before they could really dig their teeth into chunky morsels of competitive tennis. 'It was not a contest. Tajikistan were fielding a kid who was inexperienced and he was a relatively tame opponent. It was easy. We expect a much tougher outing in the second round,' said Hong Kong non-playing captain Derek Ling. Ling was not complaining. In fact he was quite content and happy to see his players wrap up the tie 3-0. But from his position of strength, it would have been better if the Tajiks had been able to provide sterner opposition. Even veteran Hong Kong Davis Cup campaigner Hui was feeling slightly peckish after the doubles match transformed into a bite-sized hors d'oeuvre which he and new partner Ismail quickly downed in a mere 75 minutes. 'It seems like Asif and I can play well together. But the opposition was not strong and it is really hard to tell. It was not difficult at all. It was a pretty comfortable win,' said Hui, who has featured for Hong Kong since 1995. Hui and Ismail were hardly put under any pressure. No questions were asked from them as the Tajikistan pair wallowed in a mire of their own making. Poor service games, a litany of unforced errors and sheer inexperience saw Makashin and Sharifi struggle to find their feet. They managed to hold their service games, and that barely too, once in each of the first two sets. They had a 100 per cent improvement in the third set, holding their serves twice, but even that was not enough as Sharifi had started by dropping his service and Makashin followed in the seventh game. 'It is disappointing to lose like this. To lose 3-0 is disappointing,' shrugged Makashin afterwards. Only 16 years old, for Sharifi, this was a tie more to gain experience. Even in defeat his smile was wide. He is a youth and has a youth's outlook towards life. While victory was welcomed, Hong Kong captain Ling was perhaps wishing for a slightly stronger opposition so that his players could be tested before the second round in April. In the three matches - Hong Kong won both opening singles on Friday with Ismail and Yu Hiu-tung winning - only Yu was given a tough time with baseliner Makashin pushing him. So even though today's reverse singles are dead rubbers, Ling will be looking at fielding Ismail against Makashin to see how the serve-and-volleyer will handle that. 'It will be a useful exercise. Everything we do now goes into a data base which we can use in the future,' said Ling, already thinking ahead. There is also the prospect that Wayne Wong, who suffered an abdominal strain before the tie, could play the second reverse singles against Sharifi. 'The opposition might not have been all that strong but I'm happy with our showing. We have a good team with a lot of young players like Yu, Brian Hung and Jack Hui around. We have invested a lot of time on these youngsters and it is starting to pay off,' added Ling. Hong Kong were expected to beat Tajikistan. On paper, the Central Asian Republic are ranked 14 places below the SAR who are 59th on the Davis Cup listings. So this result was due to Hong Kong. Now comes the hard part, taking on the winners of the Lebanon v Iran tie in April. Lebanon are the top seeds in this group and are fancied to win. That battle will certainly be a mouthful for Hong Kong.
