Today’s Men’s News (09/16)

Written by: Staff on 16th September 2012

Today's Men's News (09/16) |

Davis Cup

David Ferrer just can’t seem to figure out first sets. He struggled on Friday against Sam Querrey, then pounced. Ditto on Sunday. He lost the opening set to John Isner in a tiebreak. It resulted in a three hour match. But Ferrer had no trouble after that, drawing error after error from Isner. 6-7 6-3 6-4 6-2, and the Spanish were the first team into the final.

Too bad, for them, that the final will be an away tie. One suspects they won’t get to play on clay.

The fifth match, which was supposed to be Querrey versus Nicolas Almagro, was not played.

The Czechs would very likely have won the tie against Argentina even had Juan Martin del Potro played. With Carlos Berlocq in the lineup instead, the Czechs not only won, they cruised. Tomas Berdych put them in the final by beating Berlocq 6-3 6-3 6-4. Juan Monaco did earn the Argentines one more point; he beat substitute Ivo Minar 6-3 7-6.

The Czechs will host the final; presumably they will choose the slickest, fastest, most un-clay-like carpet surface they can find.

The Playoffs

The fates seemed intent on slowing down Italy’s win over Chile — first there was a darkness delay on Friday, then the Chileans won Saturday’s doubles. But the end result was just as expected. Andreas Seppi clinched by beating Paul Capdeville 6-3 6-1 6-3. The Italians made it 4-1 after the inevitable substitutions; Simone Bolelli, who hadn’t been used until then, beat 16-year-old Chilean Christian Garin 6-4 6-3.

The Italians were the first to finish, but Belgium was getting close to a sweep by then. David Goffin earned them their fourth point by beating Swedish substitute Markus Eriksson 6-3 6-4. (Pretty amazing to think that the Swedes were substituting for Michael Ryderstedt. Ordinarily we’d expect Ryderstedt to be the substitute!) Steve Darcis then beat Andreas Vinciguerra 6-4 6-2 to complete a 5-0 rout.

Uzbekistan’s inability to find a backup for Denis Istomin probably cost them. A tired Istomin lost the fourth match to Kazakhstan’s rested Mikhail Kukushkin 6-4 6-2 6-7 6-2, and the Kazakhs were through. They didn’t bother playing the fifth match.

Japan, with its back to the wall, finally got Kei Nishikori on the court. He replaced Tatsuma Ito, and proceeded to beat Israel’s Dudi Sela 6-3 3-6 4-6 6-4 7-5. That left it to Israel’s unlikely hero Amir Weintraub to try to win the tie. Based on rankings, Go Soeda should have blown him away. But Weintraub, although he is no factor at all on the ATP, is a force in Davis Cup. (Sounds like a case for a sports psychologist.) It took three hours and twenty minutes, but he beat Soeda 6-3 7-6 4-6 6-4 and Israel was through.

In Germany, Lleyton Hewitt got half the ending he wanted: He was to play the decisive match. That came about because Florian Mayer beat Bernard Tomic 6-4 6-2 6-3 to level the tie. The Germans must have really wished, about then, that they had Philipp Kohlschreiber or Tommy Haas available — but they had no choice but to turn to Cedric-Marcel Stebe.

Hewitt probably wasn’t so fond of what happened next. Clay continues to be his bane; Stebe thrashed him 6-4 6-1 6-4. It was even faster than you might think from that scoreline.

Roger Federer clearly didn’t want to spend any more time on the court than he had to. He came, he saw, he clinched, beating Robin Haase of the Netherlands 6-1 6-4 6-4. The Swiss then substituted, letting Marco Chiudinelli play the final point. He lost to Thiemo de Bakker 6-2 7-6.

Canada was the last nation to clinch — but that was purely a matter of time zones. The decisive match was the fourth, and it was quick: Milos Raonic beat South Africa’s Izak van der Merwe 6-2 6-2 6-4. The Canadians then brought in Frank Dancevic to face Nikola Scholtz. (Too bad the South Africans didn’t run out their fourth team member, 39-year-old John-Laffnie de Jager, who is old enough to be Scholtz’s father. That would have been interesting.) Dancevic won that match 6-3 6-2 to give Canada a 4-1 win.

The tie between Brazil and Russia was already settled, but it just kept getting more lopsided. Thomaz Bellucci made it 4-0 by beating Alex Bogomolov Jr. 7-6 6-3. Both sides substituted in the last match, but the Brazilians were deeper; Rogerio Dutra Silva beat Stanislav Vovk 6-2 6-2, and Brazil had a 5-0 win.

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