India secure World Group Play-offs berth in Davis Cup Tennis

1.    India secure World Group Play-offs berth in Davis Cup Tennis

i. India today secured a World Group Play-offs berth in Davis Cup Tennis, as it defeated hosts South Korea, 3-1 in the second round of the Asia Oceania Group-I tie at Busan.

ii. Needing just one win from 2 Reverse Singles matches on the final day of the tie, Somdev Devvarman defeated Yong-Kyu Lim, 6-4, 5-7, 6-3, 6-1 to take India to the World Group Play-offs. The other Reverse Singles match was scheduled to take place between Sanam Singh and Hyeon Chug.

iii. In the lone Doubles match yesterday, the duo of Rohan Bopanna and Saketh Myneni prevailed over Hyung-Taik Lee and Lim Yong-Kyu in four sets to give India a crucial 2-1 lead.

2.    Writer-environmentalist Peter Matthiessen dies

i. Peter Matthiessen, a rich man’s son who rejected a life of ease in favour of physical and spiritual challenges and produced such acclaimed works as The Snow Leopard and At Play in the Fields of the Lord, died Saturday. He was 86.

ii. Matthiessen helped found The Paris Review, one of the most influential literary magazines, and won National Book Awards for The Snow Leopard, his spiritual account of the Himalayas, and for Shadow Country. 

iii. A leading environmentalist and wilderness writer, he embraced the best and worst that nature could bring him, whether trekking across the Himalayas, parrying sharks in Australia or enduring a hurricane in Antarctica.

iv. Matthiessen was born in New York in 1927, the son of Erard A. Matthiessen, a wealthy architect and conservationist. “The Depression had no serious effect on our well-insulated family,” the author would later write.