Ones for the Ages: Davis Cup’s Unlikely Record Holders

The Oldest: Yaka of Togo

“Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing.”
~Oliver Wendell Holmes

Gadonfin Yaka’s record-setting Davis Cup story began with a faulty alarm clock. “I was Togo’s captain, and we were traveling to Mauritius to play a match,” he recalled. “One of my players overslept and missed the flight, and another was going to have to leave early, so I had to play.” Yaka, who was born in a modest thatched roof dwelling in a remote Togolese village without electricity or running water, had retired from his job as a librarian five years before and wasn’t expecting to make a Davis Cup debut at the ripe age of 60.

Andre Agassi complained in his memoir Open that the Davis Cup “played havoc with my manicure schedule,” and many of today’s stars are similarly unwilling to commit to an event that offers scant remuneration and no ranking points. The Davis Cup is the world’s largest annual sporting event; this year 133 nations competed across 13 divisions. The stories of the youngest and oldest men ever to compete in the tournament indicate that the cup’s most compelling moments often involve players nowhere near the top of the ATP rankings.

Yaka, whom a childhood boxing coach had nicknamed “Pasmal” (“not bad “in French), did not pick up a tennis racquet until 1969, at age 29. A year later, he was the No. 1-ranked player in the West African nation of Togo, and by 2001, at age 60, he was still ranked No. 5. Yaka made his Davis Cup debut during an away tie with Mauritius; the losing team would face relegation. Togo and the hosts split the singles matches, leaving the doubles rubber to decide the tie. The fate of the Togolese Davis Cup season rested on the shoulders of a 60-year old man and his 17-year old doubles partner.

“When I saw this guy with the gray hair, I thought he was the coach, but when he pulled out his racquet, I was like, oh I guess he’s playing,” remembers Guillaume Desvaux, one of the Mauritian doubles players who played Yaka and his partner Kwami Gakpo.
The Togolese players, who had never before seen a clay court, were shut out in the first set. “I could tell the crowd thought that I was just warming the players up, and were waiting for real players to come out,” Yaka says.

After adjusting to the soft red clay courts, Yaka began to find his game, and the Mauritians realized they had a match on their hands. “After the first set, we started to think that maybe we should play more gently with him,” Desvaux says. “But later we realized we needed to play our best to beat them.” As the Togolese players began to find their footing, something unusual happened: the Mauritian crowd started cheering for the visitors.

Yaka and Gakpo fought gamely but were defeated in three sets.

Although Togo lost the tie, Yaka made it into the history books as the oldest man ever to compete in Davis Cup. One glitch: the ITF and the Guinness Book of World Records recorded his age on the day of the doubles match as 59 years, 147 days, when in fact he was 60 years, 247 days. His birth certificate had listed the date his parents requested the document, not his actual date of birth. Yaka’s name was also misspelled and transposed in the record books, which refer to him as Yaka-Garonfin Koptigan, rather than Gadonfin Koptigan Yaka. “I didn’t even know about the record until a friend in Togo told me years later,” Yaka says. “He said I was in the Guinness Book but I haven’t had time to check it.”

Not surprising, given how busy he’s been. Yaka immigrated to the U.S. in 2005 and now puts in 17-hour days as a security guard and a factory worker in Germantown, Maryland. “I came here for my son,” Yaka says. “Next year I’ll get American citizenship and I’ll be able to help him come to America, then he can take care of me.” None of Yaka’s American friends or colleagues have any idea that he’s a Davis Cup record-holder. “I told my co-workers once that I played Davis Cup, and they laughed, they said, ‘sure you did, you played against Andy Roddick, right?’”

Yaka’s record may not be safe, however. In 2003, at age 56, Ramiro Benavides, a retired professional player from Bolivia, became the second oldest man to play a Davis Cup match when he faced El Salvador in doubles after a 20-year absence from Cup competition. “The other team was surprised to see me on the court,” Benavies remembers. “In the first set, they were firing all the balls at me.”

Benavides was playing brilliantly, however, and the Bolivians took the first set. Javier Taborga, Benavides’ doubles partner, recalls, “They were trying to go around me, but Ramiro was playing extremely well.” In the second set, the Salvadorans decided to change their approach. “It went from hit it to the old guy, to hit it to the other guy,” Benavides said, laughing. The new strategy worked, and the Salvadorans closed out the match, 2-6, 6-0, 6-3.

Until recently, Benavides thought that he was the oldest Davis Cup competitor in the books. When informed that Yaka holds the record, Benavides, now 62, said: “So that means I need to compete in 2010 to get my record back?” He wasn’t joking. “I’m still fit. We have guys in Bolivia ranked around No. 700 in the world, and I can take the first set off them, but then I get tired.”

The Youngest: Banzer of Liechtenstein

Age is an issue of mind over matter.  If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.
~Mark Twain

While some small countries rely upon retired players to fill out their Davis Cup rosters, others recruit promising teenagers. Two of the three youngest players in Davis Cup history, Kenny Banzer of Liechtenstein and Hadi Badri of the United Arab Emirates, were both serving as ball boys only months before their Davis Cup debuts. The sport’s governing body officially recognizes Bangladesh’s Mohammed Akhtar Hossain as the youngest Davis Cup player in history at 13 years, 326 days. But Hossain, who now teaches tennis in Beijing, acknowledges that he was actually 15 when he played Davis Cup.

Kenny Banzer, who in 2000 became the actual youngest Davis Cup participant at 14 years, 5 days old, fought his way onto Liechtenstein’s squad by winning a playoff match against a schoolmate. Banzer, who had to take a week off from the seventh grade in order to compete, teamed up with Wolfgang Strub, then 42, for a series of Davis Cup matches in Ghana. How were the unlikely duo perceived by their opponents? “We were really big amateurs,” admits Strub, who, at 51, is still ranked No. 7 in Liechtenstein. “I was already too old to play really, but one player had to study for exams, and another couldn’t get time off work, so I had to participate. It wasn’t a question of quality; it was a question of availability.” Nevertheless, the team won two matches and earned the respect of their opponents.

Banzer acknowledges that he owes his place in the record books in large part to the fact that he hails from a country of only 35,000 people. “I had an advantage for sure. I was happy to be from Liechtenstein,” he says. The ITF no longer allows players under 14 to play Davis Cup, so Banzer’s record is unlikely to be broken.

Badri was given two plastic racquets at age 7, and within a year was training with the United Arab Emirates’ national team. In 1995, he made his Davis Cup debut at 14 years, 42 days, and he went on to play in 13 additional Cup matches before moving to the U.S. to play tennis at Tufts University in Boston.

While Davis Cup captains may struggle to recruit the game’s top players to participate, players like Yaka, Benavides, Banzer, Badri and Strub can’t imagine passing up the opportunity to play Davis Cup. “Anyone who is given the chance to represent their country has to take it,” says Badri.

Dave Seminara is a freelance writer based in Chicago.