Portugal at the 2002 Federation Cup

The Federation Cup was started in the year 1963 when the International Tennis Federation was celebrating its 50th anniversary. The 2002 Federation Cup was the 40th edition of the most recognized sporting events in the women’s tennis. There were about 83 teams participating in this competition and Portugal at the 2002 Federation Cup was one of them. Portugal began its Fed Cup campaign since 1968 and this year it is their 14th appearance in the competition. Till date their best performance has come on their debut where they had reached the world group second round.

Portugal at the 2002 Federation Cup was in the Euro/African zone group I along with the teams like Belarus, Bulgaria, Estonia, Greece, Georgia, Israel, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, Turkey, Ukraine and Yugoslavia. Portugal had a very poor presentation in this competition as they lost all their round robin matches. In the first match they lost to Bulgaria by the score of 3:0, even in the next match against Estonia Portugal was defeated very easily by the score of 3:0. At least in the match against Georgia they managed to win a game but failed to win the match as Georgia defeated Portugal by the score of 2:1. This sober performance had Portugal demoted to the group II for the 2003 Fed Cup.

The over all performance of Portugal at the 2002 Federation Cup was shocking because they had a very bad display in all the three matches they played. In the three matches they played they could win only one game out of nine games they played. This shows that they really did not have a great tournament this year and therefore they got relegated to the group II for the next year’s tournament.