MANILA – The Philippines dominated the first day of the Davis Cup Asia/Oceania Zone Group II semifinal tie as its netters, Treat Huey and Cecil Mamiit, posted wins over their Pakistani opponents in straight sets.

“I’m happy with their performance,” RP Davis Cup coach Chris Cuarto told abs-cbnNEWS.com. The Philippines, currently with a 2-0 advantage over Pakistan, is just one victory away from reaching the Group II final in September where it will face New Zealand or Indonesia.

“One more match,” said Cuarto. “Hopefully we’ll get it tomorrow.” The Davis Cup tie is a best-of-five series with two singles matches played on the first day, a doubles match on the second day, and the reverse singles matches on the final day.

Huey clinched the crucial first singles match against Aqeel Khan, 6-4, 7-5, 6-2, on Friday afternoon at the Philippine Columbian Association (PCA) center court in Paco, Manila.

“I tried to play the best I could,” said the Filipino-American. Before quickly bagging the third set and winning the match with an ace, Huey struggled in the second set as he was down 3-5. Huey then broke Khan’s service game twice and held serve twice as well to take the second set, 7-5.

Cecil Mamiit posted a comfortable win against Khan’s younger brother in the second singles match of the day.

Mamiit, the 2005 Southeast Asian Games singles gold medalist, dominated Jalil Khan, 6-1, 6-2, 6-1. Mamiit was leading the final set 4-0 when Khan held serve to score a game, making it 4-1. Mamiit held serve to lead with 5-1. He won the match by breaking his opponent’s serve.

“I was too excited,” shared Mammit of his thoughts on the match. “I had to slow down and take care of business.”

Primetime schedule

Mamiit, being the showman that he is, went to the center of the court after his victory, much to the delight of Filipino supporters.

The fans were egging on Mamiit to dance just like what he did during the SEA Games when he grooved to “Pinoy Ako,” the Pinoy Big Brother theme by Orange and Lemons.

Mamiit instead threw his wristband and towels to the crowd. He also gave away some shirts. He even went around to make high fives.

The venue was around 60 percent full, said Davis Cup administrator Randy Villanueva. He mentioned that he is very happy with the crowd turnout.

Villanueva noted that the starting time of matches was moved to 3 p.m. from the usual 10 a.m. in order to attract more people to watch.

He said it is the first time in 20 years that Davis Cup matches are played during primetime in the Philippines.

“We’ve invested a lot,” disclosed Villanueva as they had to install more than 20 lights (to add to the 10 lights of PCA’s center court) to meet the Davis Cup requirement for night matches.

Going for the sweep

Meantime, the RP team is aiming to seal the semifinal tie on Saturday with the doubles match featuring Patrick-John Tierro and Francis Casey Alcantara against Jalil Khan and Jibran Mohammadi.

It would be the first time that Tierro and Alcantara would be playing doubles. “We know each other. I hope we’ll do our best,” said Tierro.

Alcantara, the 2009 Australian Open Junior Boys’ Doubles champion, remarked: “Ready naman lahat.”

However, he added that the doubles line-up can still be changed by Coach Cuarto. Davis Cup rules allow a coach to change his line-up provided that it is done one hour before the match.

The doubles match on Saturday starts at 3 p.m. The reverse singles matches on Sunday will also begin at 3 p.m.

The Pakistani team came into the tie without its No. 1 player Aisam Qureshi, who pulled out of Davis Cup because he is currently entered in a tournament in the United States. Pakistan’s team is coached by Rashid Malik. Its fourth member is Yasir Khan.