TENNIS Jamaica’s team of four players and a coach left the island yesterday to participate in the 2017 Davis Cup BNP, by Paribas Americas Zone Group Three Team Tennis competition — to be held June 12-17 in Montevideo, Uruguay.

The players — 23-year-old Rowland “Randy” Phillips, 18-year-old Jacob Bicknell, 17-year-old Dimitri Bird and 27-year-old Macoy Malcolm —were selected after participating in the National Trials held at the Eric Bell Tennis Centre recently. The team is scheduled to return to the island Sunday, June 18.

Bicknell, Bird and Malcolm. will be representing Jamaica for the first time in the Senior Men’s Davis Cup competition.

Notable absentee from the team is veteran and current Jamaica number one player, Damion Johnson.

Meanwhile, Phillips, who is currently playing on the professional men’s circuit, represented Jamaica for the first time last year against The Bahamas, where they lost narrowly 2-3 in the men’s team final.

Nine countries — Jamaica, Costa Rica, Honduras, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Bermuda, Antigua and Barbuda and host Uruguay — will be competing in two pools as they seek to be promoted to Americas Zone Group Two in the 2018 competition.

The countries will compete in two Pools — ‘A’ and ‘B’ — with the winners of each playing against the runners-up to determine which two nations will be promoted to the Americas Zone Group Two next year.

Pool ‘A’ will have four teams, while Pool ‘B’ will consist of five teams. Matches will be played on a round robin basis in each pool, with the top two from each playing off to be promoted to Group Two next year.

In the other positional play-offs, third place in both pools will meet each other, while the fourth-place finisher take on each other.

Meanwhile, Llockett McGregor, who is the coach and non-playing captain of the team, said: “It’s a very young team and they are going out there to do their best.

“The three new players are not experienced enough; they have been preparing for the competition and they are expected to play to the best of their abilities.”

According to McGregor, the competition will be played on clay court, and the players have been practising on it for the past 10 days to get acclimatised, before departing to Uruguay.

— Gerald Reid