Agwi looking to enjoy Davis Cup play-offs

GAME, SET, AND MATCH: Michael Agwi says he is doesn’t want to ‘set goals’ ahead of Ireland’s Davis Cup World Group One play-off first round match with Austria. Pic: Piaras Ó Mídheach, Sportsfile

Third time lucky? Not for Michael Agwi, it wasn’t. The Dublin-born, Berlin-based player will be hoping that his fourth crack at Davis Cup tennis with Ireland, against Austria in Limerick this weekend, proves smoother than his experiences so far.

Agwi travelled to Barbados in September of 2022 as a non-playing reserve, injury kept him out of the tie against El Salvador last September, and a dodgy tummy left him less than primed for a singles tie over in Peru this time last year.

“I got food poisoning but I played anyway. It was really bad. I was sleeping maybe two, three hours the night before the game. I wanted to play so bad so that was my decision to play. Unfortunately I lost.” A 6-3, 6-4 defeat to Conner Huertas del Pino was no disgrace given the circumstances and the 20-year old now joins Osgar O’hOisin, Simon Carr, Conor Gannon and David O’Hare in attempting to secure promotion to the World Cup Group I in the coming days.

That’s the second division of Davis Cup tennis, basically, and it’s no small ask against a stacked Austrian team that has at its disposal former world number three Dominic Thiem (now ranked 92nd) as well as Sebastian Ofner who is ranked 42nd.

Added to that will be a doubles side ranked in the low 30s. None of Ireland’s quintet have equivalent numbers lower than four figures but tennis is littered with examples of players beating opponents much further up the food chain.

O’Hare and Gannon faced the 2022 French Open doubles champion Marcelo Arevalo and partner Lluis Miralles in El Salvador and took that match 6-2, 6-3. And Agwi has previous in taking down players ranked well above his ATP station of 1117.

He faces into this tie in Limerick having reached his first ITF World Tennis final in Cadolzburg, Germany earlier this month where world number 423 Daniel Masur was stretched to three sets and only won it with a break at 5-4 in the last.

A day like that only injects new belief.

“It does, it does. It gives me a huge confidence and I think I can work into this direction and getting my ranking up, but I don’t want to set goals. I want to be happy on tour, to play, to progress and to have fun.” 

Agwi was born in Dublin to a Nigerian father and a Ukrainian mother before moving to Berlin a few years later. He started playing under the Irish flag towards the end of his junior years and that was when Tennis Ireland began to take an interest and invite him on board.

There are 49 German players in the world’s top 1,000, but this wasn’t some expedient choice. Choosing Ireland didn’t bring with it any wild card invites for tour events given the continuing lack of such tournaments on these shores.

“Also, it’s a privilege to play Davis Cup for Ireland. I mean, who can say that? That they play Davis Cup. That’s quite big. I mean, I was always Irish. I always had the Irish passport. Basically, there was no decision. I just never changed.” 

Tennis is in the family. His maternal grandfather and his mother both played and it was the latter who brought him down to the courts when he was just five. By seven he had given up football, by ten he knew that he wanted to play professionally.

“From there on it went quite good, I guess.” Irish-based youngsters are faced with a pot pourri of problems, whether that be the lack of clay surfaces, the scarcity of indoor facilities, the low numbers of similarly-talented players and the difficulty in getting enough tournaments under their belt.

Agwi’s journey wasn’t perfect in that sense. Germany may be a traditional tennis giant but the Berlin area is lacking in indoor courts and that impacts him during the winter when he needs to be clocking in with more tournament experience.

“He has got an unusually strong combination in that he is tall and he also has real speed,” said Ireland’s Davis Cup captain Conor Niland. “He covers the court really well and he has a lot of easy power and he could probably get a little bit more out of his first serve given that.

“He probably doesn’t get enough free points on it but it is improving. He has a lot of background playing on clay but he is maybe a more natural quick-court player in terms of his game style with some pretty flat ground strokes. He has a really high ceiling.” 

Reaching that first ‘Futures’ final in Cadolzburg was a promising sign for a player whose career will be shaped to a large degree by what happens in the next two or three years. Limerick this week will be part of that moulding process.