Could be the start of Aljaz's era.

wow, what a win! - been out for most of the day, so just catching up!

Always nice to see a success story from a player coming back from injury issues, good luck to Aljaz in the final.

Given his nationality switch appears to be imminent please could one of our linguistics experts explain to me how to pronounce his name? I've no idea on Bedene but have assumed Aljaz is pronounced something like "Al - ee - ash" but the commentators yesterday were using the Spanish pronunciation of the J to come up with "Al - har" so I'm thoroughly confused now!!

Well the Aljaz in Strictly Come Dancing is always referred to as 'Al-ee-ash' so that would be my supporting evidence :)

He is also Slovenian.

imoen wrote:

---

Always nice to see a success story from a player coming back from injury issues, good luck to Aljaz in the final.

Given his nationality switch appears to be imminent please could one of our linguistics experts explain to me how to pronounce his name? I've no idea on Bedene but have assumed Aljaz is pronounced something like "Al - ee - ash" but the commentators yesterday were using the Spanish pronunciation of the J to come up with "Al - har" so I'm thoroughly confused now!!

---

This suggests that the surname is pronounced roughly as SMC suggests, though as the narrator is a Brit, I'm not sure how much store you can set by it!   Don't be misled by the "Ali" nickname:  as there's what's known as a "breve" (a diacritic in the shape of a little curved hook) over the "z" of the first name when you see it written as it should be, I believe that it's meant to be pronounced "Al-YASH", with the "j" acting purely like the "j" in the German for "yes", ja, and not meant to introduce an extra syllable, while the stress falls on the second syllable (hence the upper case).  One thing's as certain as [the fact that] God made little apples:  the two together offer Sue Barker & Co almost unlimited scope to mangle them, come Wimbledon, or until such time as the man himself sees fit to put them right!

Vandenburg wrote:

---

The UKIP style comments on this thread have something else, but really at heart represent the kind of people who follow tennis in the uk, small C conservatives. If this chap gains a British passport, by definition he will be British so SHOULD BE allowed to represent GB in the Davis Cup by right. Yes he will never be British ethnically, I understand that, but neither was Bogdanovic and Greg R,

---

 

V, the vast majority of people have expressed a warm welcome to Bedene (myself included). There have been hardly any jingoistic comments (or, at least, only a couple of tongue in cheek ones and the world needs a little humour to go round, otherwise it's very dull).

As to the Davis cup, that's a question for tennis authorities.

I completely agree that the starting premise is that if someone is nationality X, then they should be able to play for X country's team. However, the tennis authorities have changed the rules as of Jan 2015. It's nothing to do with the opinion of forumites here. And if Bedene gets his application approved on time (and - seemingly - a separate application to the ITF (do hope his solicitor remembered to do that...)), then it's still open to question who should be out number two. Both Ward and Bedene would have good claims, nothing to do with nationality, purely tennis.