Tep Rithivit is a successful businessman who has played his part in rebuilding Cambodia after the horrors of the Khmer Rouge years. Yet one of the proudest moments of his life will come this week when four of his fellow countrymen play a series of tennis matches in what is likely to be a near-empty stadium.
Group four of the Asia/Oceania Zone is as low as you can get in the Davis Cup. But Cambodia's first appearance in the competition, in Qatar, will be the realisation of a 17-year dream.
When Tep returned to the land of his birth in 1995, his family having fled to France and then Canada shortly before Pol Pot came to power 20 years earlier, he was anxious to find out what had happened to the men he used to watch playing tennis with his father, Tep Khunnah, who was one of the country's best players in the 1960s. He discovered that all but three of Cambodia's top 40 players had perished. Courts were used for executions, swimming pools as mass graves. An estimated 1.7 million people died.
Since Tep's return, which was prompted by his father's death, he has taken tennis into Cambodia's schools and orphanages, built a training centre for the country's best players, recruited coaches and scoured the world for expatriates who might be good enough to compete at international level.
The Khmer Rouge forced millions of Cambodians to leave the cities and work in rural labour camps. Money and private property were abolished and people who were suspected of being educated or middle class were tortured or executed. Those who played tennis, which was a preserve of the elite, did not have a chance.
