Bad day at the office for South African star Donald Ramphadi

South Africa’s Donald Ramphadi is out of the 2025 Australian Open after being dominated by his Israeli opponent Guy Sasson 6-0, 6-0 in a match that lasted just 59 minutes.

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Ramphadi was under no illusions as to the work required to match the standard of Wednesday’s victor.

“It was a tough day at the office today. The guy played very well, and he was a beast today.

“If you ask me, I tried my best, but it was not enough.

“To be the best in the world, I think I have to go back and just work five times harder so that I can compete with these guys.

“He was just everywhere. He was pushing well, hitting balls well, and I was not able to match his level today.

“I guess I need to work hard on pushing, recovering on the court, placing the serve where I want.

“He was just doing everything good. At the end of the day the best player wins. He did well today.”

‘Improve his game’

Ramphadi is prepared to put in the work to improve his game.

“I need to be honest with myself, and start focusing on those things. To be able to be one of the best players in the world, I need to work five times more.”

Ramphadi pinpointed certain areas of his game that need work.

“I think definitely the speed on the chair. I have to be faster. There’s a whole lot of things we’re going to look at.”

Next up for Ramphadi is a doubles match with his new Turkish team-mate Ahmed Kaplan. They take on the top-seeded pairing of Guy Sasson of Israel and Niels Vink of the Netherlands.

Hopefully Ramphadi will be able to quickly put this match out of his mind when he faces Sasson for the second time on the same day.

Play better

Ramphadi expressed feeling ready to take on their opponents.

“I’m very confident we can actually play better because we played against them last week in a high intensity match.

“I feel today it’s definitely going to be the same thing and whatever we did wrong last week, we looked at it, and we’re going to fix it going into the match today.”       

On his new doubles partnership, Donald Ramphadi said: “I’ve just started playing with Ahmed Kaplan this year, so we’re going to be playing together.

“We’re still getting to know each other. It’s a process to get know a player and understand them.

“When you’re playing doubles, you need to know what the player is going to do before he does it.

“I feel like me and Kaplan are still starting to get know each other but he is quite an unbelievable player and I believe we can do it today.”

BREAKING UPDATE

Ramphadi and Kaplan lost their doubles quarter-final match to Sasson and Vink 6-0, 6-3 in a match that lasted 62 minutes.

Dave Marshall is covering the 2025 Australian Open in Melbourne exclusively for The South African website