Davis Cup Update, Results and A Few Comments

Written by: Staff on 13th February 2012

Davis Cup Update, Results and A Few Comments

epa03077122 Kei Nishikori of Japan returns the ball to Andy Murray of Great Britain during their quarter final match at the Australian Open Grand Slam tennis tournament in Melbourne, Australia, 25 January 2012. Murray won 6-3, 6-3 and 6-1. EPA/PAUL CROCK - POOL |

It was kind of a dull day in a lot of places. So many ties had been settled early that Sunday was mostly a day of tidying up. Not in Japan, though. That went down to the wire. With Japan down 2-1, Kei Nishikori had to come through — and, after failing on Friday, he did just fine on Sunday, beating Ivan Dodig 7-5 7-6 6-3.

That left Japan with a decision to make. Their #2 player in the rankings is Go Soeda. He is experienced — a known commodity. Their alternative was Tatsuma Ito — ranked lower, but younger (23 years old; Soeda is 27) and rising. Either choice would of course be subject to second guessing.

This is where the game theory could come in. Given that neither player is as good as opponent Ivo Karlovic, the “expected” value of either contest was a loss — but the probabilities were different. Soeda’s expected score was better than Ito’s. But, because Ito has more variation in his results, we would estimate his odds of winning to be higher than Soeda’s, even though his odds of losing 6-0 6-0 6-0 were also higher.

The Japanese didn’t see it that way. They went with Soeda, who lost 7-6 6-1 6-4 to Karlovic, giving Croatia a 3-2 victory.

The big question for the Americans in their tie against the Swiss was who would play out the dead rubber. Ryan Harrison obviously would get one of the matches, and he promptly dismissed Swiss substitute Michael Lammer 7-6 7-6 to make it 4-0 for the Americans. But who would play Marco Chiudinelli in the other dead match? John Isner decided that he would play his part, and won 6-3 6-4 to give the Americans a sweep.

It’s not often that you see the #2 guy on a team held out of action until he substitutes for the #3 after the tie is settled — but that’s what happened in the Argentina/Germany tie. Juan Ignacio Chela replaced David Nalbandian for the fourth match, against Florian Mayer, and won 7-5 7-5. Both sides substituted in the final match, allowing the Germans to win their one and only point; Cedrik-Marcel Stebe beat Eduardo Schwank, whose singles career seems to be effectively over, 7-6 7-5.

At the rate things are going, Alex Bogomolov Jr. may find it as hard to get a job with Russia’s Davis Cup team as with the American. In the tie with Austria, he lost two crucial points. In Sunday’s first match, he lost 6-2 6-4 6-1 to Jurgen Melzer. That gave the Austrians their third win and a place in the quarterfinal — after a 17 year wait! The Russians did manage to make the final score 3-2; Igor Kunitsyn beat Andreas Haider-Maurer 6-4 4-6 7-6.

You could pretty clearly see the psychological effects in the fourth match between the Czechs and Italy. The Czechs substituted Lukas Rosol, while the Italians stuck with their top player Andreas Seppi — but Rosol still won 4-6 6-3 6-4. Then the Czechs substituted doubles specialist Frantisek Cermak. At least the Italians won that; Simone Bolelli earned them their only point by beating Cermak 6-4 6-4.

There seemed to be almost a rule that the team that won the first three matches would also win the fourth. Spain’s Nicolas Almagro was willing to play out the dead rubber, and beat Kazakh substitute Evgeny Korolev 6-3 6-4. Marcel Granollers took over for Juan Carlos Ferrero in the final match — and he made it a sweep, beating Andrey Golubev 6-3 6-7 6-3.

Janko Tipsarevic of Serbia was pretty tired going into the reverse singles, but he had the advantage of facing Michael Ryderstedt of Sweden. 6-2 7-6 7-5, and the Serbs were in the quarterfinal. They even won the battle of the leftovers: Substitute Dusan Lajovic beat Filip Prpic 6-4 6-4, giving the Serbs a sweep of the singles.

The Canadians had the worst possible news before the resumption of their tie with France: Milos Raonic was out. The decision to play him in doubles looks particularly bad, since they lost both the point and their top player. He did something to his knee and had to withdraw. That left Frank Dancevic to face Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. Dancevic actually put up a pretty good fight in the first set, but it was downhill from there. Tsonga clinched the tie 6-4 6-4 6-1.

Interestingly, with only three sets to play and nothing on the line, Gael Monfils took his place in the French lineup, taking on Vasek Pospisil. He was up for it. 6-4 6-4, and everyone got to hurry off to next week’s events.

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