Davis Cup Preview

Written by: Staff on 30th January 2014

Davis Cup Preview

epa04048512 Roger Federer, of Switzerland, returns a ball during a training session prior to the Davis Cup World Group first round matches between Serbia and Switzerland at the Spens Sport Center in Novi Sad, Serbia, Thursday, January 30, 2014. The Davis Cup first round Serbia vs Switzerland will take place from January 31 to February 2. EPA/SALVATORE DI NOLFI |

Men’s Look Forward: Davis Cup

One of the big problems with Davis Cup is that, the better you perform, the more weeks you have to set aside to play Davis Cup. You can’t just win one week and then take a break. Win a tie, and your reward is to play the next tie.

This raises an obvious proposal. Right now, there is a sort of minimum Davis Cup requirement: You have to volunteer for a certain number of ties to qualify for the Olympics. But what about a maximum number of ties? Or of matches? What if you mandated that no player would have to play more than (say) three matches a year?

It would certainly make for some very different teams! Imagine the coaches having to decide whether to include their top players in the early-round lineup, or to save them for later on. Or whether to play a player who has only one match “available” on day one or day three…. We could do a whole feature on this, but since the ITF surely won’t go for it, we’ll just say… can you imagine what the Czechs would do under this rule? After all, they’ve twice won the Cup using a team that for practical purposes consists only of Tomas Berdych and Radek Stepanek. And that’s their lineup this year, too, when they host the Dutch on an indoor hardcourt. The rest of their team is Lukas Rosol and Jiri Vesely, but don’t expect to see them while the tie is live.

The Netherlands answers with Robin Haase, Igor Sijsling, Thiemo de Bakker, and doubles specialist Jean-Julien Rojer. The Dutch will have to choose Rojer’s doubles partner carefully, since their only other good chance for a point is Haase versus Stepanek; they want that doubles point. They’re listing de Bakker, but based on past results, we’d guess they’ll go with Sijsling.

Japan will be hosting Canada on an indoor hardcourt, but it didn’t seem all that likely to help. The Japanese have Kei Nishikori, but the rest of their team is Go Soeda, Yuichi Sugita, and newcomer Yasutaka Uchiyama. In other words, not much besides Nishikori. Whereas the Canadians had two good singles players in Milos Raonic and Vasek Pospisil, plus doubles specialist Daniel Nestor. Even if Nishikori won both his singles matches, that still left three low-hanging fruit for Canada.

But, on Thursday, it was announced that Raonic would not be able to play due to an ankle injury, and Pospisil, it is now reported, will play only doubles because of his ongoing back problems. That puts the singles burden on Frank Dancevic and Peter Polansky. What looked like a possible 4-1 win for Canada now looks like it could be 3-2 or 4-1 for Japan.

Germany and Spain are two of the teams that might have enough depth to deal with our limited-matches scenario above. Germany has just about its full lineup: Tommy Haas, Philipp Kohlschreiber, Florian Mayer, and Daniel Brands, plus they chose the surface (Rebound Ace, oddly enough). Spain, by contrast, is missing its two biggest guns, Rafael Nadal and David Ferrer. That leaves Spain with a lineup of Feliciano Lopez, Fernando Verdasco, Roberto Bautista Agut, and doubles specialist David Marrero. Those guys are doing well enough that they have a good chance — but things would obviously be easier if they had Nadal or Ferrer.

Curiously, both teams are holding out some of their big guns in singles. Haas is supposed to play only doubles (with Brands), leaving the singles to Mayer and Kohlschreiber. For Spain, Lopez and Bautista Agut are the chosen singles players, leaving Verdasco to play doubles with Marrero. Admittedly Marrero/Verdasco are an extremely strong doubles team who should be able to swamp any team the Germans field, but we would still expect to see Verdasco in the reverse singles if the tie is live.

France always has a problem: Pick a fast surface and make Jo-Wilfried Tsonga happy, or pick clay and help Richard Gasquet. They went for the clay — because it will surely drive the Australians crazy as well. With Bernard Tomic hurting, the Australians have Lleyton Hewitt, much-faded Chris Guccione, and the youngsters Nick Kyrgios and Thanasi Kokkinakis; it will be Hewitt and Kyrgios in singles, Hewitt and Guccione in doubles. The French have all their big guns: Gasquet, Tsonga, Gael Monfils, and Julien Benneteau, with the first two listed for singles and the latter pair for doubles. Things don’t look good for Australia.

Rare indeed is the nation that is as dependent upon one player as is Great Britain, which has Andy Murray — but has to back him with James Ward, Dominic Inglot, and Colin Fleming. They’re visiting the United States, which made the interesting decision to host the tie on clay — presumably to mess up the non-Murray members of the British team. (Although Murray hasn’t been any too happy with the feel of the clay, so he may be bothered too.)

Both teams did some mad scrambling at the end, although for different reasons. The Americans had hoped to field a team of John Isner, Sam Querrey, and Bob and Mike Bryan. But Isner continues to struggle with the ankle injury that cost him at the beginning of the year, so Donald Young is on the team to play #2 singles behind Querrey. It’s a real blow, since the Americans had, until then, hoped to win the two singles matches not involving Murray, plus of course the doubles.

The British had two choices to make — who to play at #2 singles, and who to play in the doubles with Fleming. The talk of playing Kyle Edmund was just that — talk. James Ward is the #2 singles player. They don’t even have Edmund available as a backup, because of concerns about Murray. The British hope to have him play three matches, but if he isn’t up to it, they needed a second doubles player, and so brought in Inglot to replace Edmund. (Odd to note that Inglot, the substitute who may not even play, is ranked above Fleming, who was on the team all along….) This raises the question of why the British would waste Murray, since they’re facing the Bryans in the doubles anyway, but Davis Cup captains rarely follow game theory…. With so many holes on both teams, it’s hard to predict the outcome of that one.

Argentina still hasn’t made peace with Juan Martin del Potro, who is hurting anyway. That leaves them with a team of Juan Monaco (slumping), Carlos Berlocq (rarely given to really big wins), Horacio Zeballos (slumping), and Eduardo Schwank (completely invisible of late). And they have to host an Italian team headed by Fabio Fognini and Andreas Seppi. To be sure, Fognini too has been hurting and Seppi has been slumping. And the rest of the team is Filippo Volandri and Simone Bolelli. But the clay surface is as comfortable for the Italians as the Argentines; if they are healthy, they should be in fine shape. Both teams are using their expected lineups; the Argentines will play Berlocq and Monaco in singles and list Schwank/Zeballos for doubles, while the Italians have Seppi and Fognini in singles and claim Bolelli/Volandri will play doubles. The Argentines may well stick with that lineup; we’d guess Italy will play Bolelli/Fognini in doubles.

Kazakhstan may finally have come up with a player of their own. We say “may” because the ITF web site until a day or two ago didn’t even know where Denis Yevseyev was born (they’re now listing him as from Almaty, so he is at least geographically a Kazakh). It’s not likely to matter, though, because he is #4 on the Kazakh team, behind the three rent-a-players, Mikhail Kukushkin, Andrey Golubev, and Evgeny Korolev. Belgium’s team — David Goffin, Ruben Bemelmans, Olivier Rochus, and Germain Gigounon — isn’t any stronger, but at least they are all actual Belgians. Kukushkin and Golubev will play singles for Kazakhstan, Goffin and Bemelmans for Belgium.

It’s getting hard to remember the days when Serbia was a Davis Cup powerhouse. Viktor Troicki is suspended, Janko Tipsarevic is hurting — and Novak Djokovic isn’t playing. So they have to field a team of Dusan Lajovic, Iilja Bozoljac, Filip Krajinovic, and Nenad Zimonic. The Swiss were not expecting Roger Federer to play, but he has now joined Stanislas Wawrinka on the team. Even with both their top players tired, we’d expect a Swiss Blitz. The only questions of significance is whether the Swiss will play Federer/Wawrinka in doubles or let them play just singles. It may well depend on the score.

Davis Cup is big enough to have significant rankings effects for the players who go very deep (notably Radek Stepanek). But those points come from the late rounds. The ties this week aren’t going to make much difference — unless a team that did well last year loses early this year and loses the opportunity to defend those points. And even then, it takes a while for the effects to be felt….

Topics: 10sballs, Andy Murray, Bob Bryan, David Ferrer, Davis Cup, Donald Young, Itf, Janko Tipsarevic, John Isner, Juan Martin Del Potro, Kei Nishikori, Mike Bryan, milos raonic, Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, Sports, Tennis, Tennis News, Vasek Pospisil, Viktor Troicki

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