Serbian Davis Cup Team Celebrates Their First Davis Cup Title

Written by: Bob Larson Tennis on 7th December 2010

Serbian Davis Cup Team Celebrates Their First Davis Cup Title

Viktor Troicki (SRB) |

We never thought that Davis Cup would be like the election of a Minnesota governor, but suddenly it’s starting to feel like it. In the November 2010 election, the gubernatorial race was settled by a few tenths of a percent — a statistically significant margin, but one close enough to trigger an automatic recount. The recount finished Friday, and the candidate who lost based on the initial tally still lost — by almost the same margin. But the loser has not conceded, and instead is calling on lawyers and making allegations electoral improprieties. It’s hard to figure out what he hopes to accomplish by denying that he lost the election, but he seems intent on doing it.

As noted in yesterday’s Bob Larson’s World News, Serbia seems to be trying to deny that they “really” lost the doubles. Bogdan Obradovic, the captain of the Serbian Davis Cup team, has been criticizing the line judges — the local line judges — for not giving his team a break. He went so far as to call them “unpatriotic” — which, in the terminology of a Davis Cup tie in a country as strongly nationalist as Serbia, probably places them somewhat lower in popular esteem than “devil-worshiper.”

The line judges hardly mattered in the fourth match. Novak Djokovic came out and frankly wiped the floor with Gael Monfils. The score was 6-2 6-2 6-4, and the final was tied.

And that meant that it was strategy time. Janko Tipsarevic’s fears on Friday were justified: The Serbs replaced him with Viktor Troicki. (Talk about a tough time to get the call for a live match.) The French had to decide between nervous Gilles Simon, who had looked bad on Friday, and Michael Llodra, who had looked fine in the doubles on Saturday but who had of course played five sets. (True, Troicki played five sets also, but he’s still fairly young, whereas Llodra is thirty years old.) It appears the French had been thinking the same way we were on Friday: They chose Llodra, their strongest available player, over Simon, who had played the first live match. It was a tricky choice; Simon had beaten Troicki in all their previous meetings — but all of those wins were more than a year ago, and all came at a time when Simon was ranked higher and Troicki generally lower. Llodra would have been the obvious choice had the doubles finished quickly — but it hadn’t.

Perhaps it showed. Llodra was broken in the third game of the match, and again in the fifth. In the second set, he earned the first break, but Troicki broke in Llodra’s next two service games and sped to a two set lead.

It’s interesting to note that Troicki earned one of his breaks after Llodra thought he had won the seventh game of the set, only to find that Troicki had managed to get a winner into the court, so Llodra had to play on. Close calls can go both ways….

But no line judge could have saved Llodra. We don’t know whether it was exhaustion, or nerves, or a combination — but Troicki was passing him all over the place. Perhaps trying to avoid that, he double-faulted his way into an early break to start the third set.

That wasn’t quite the end. Llodra managed to get the break back in the seventh game of the third set. But that merely put him back on serve. Troicki instantly broke back, and served out a 6-2 6-2 6-3 win.

Talk about a thrill for the new guy….

It is of course the first-ever Davis Cup title for the still-fairly-new nation of Serbia, and for all the players on the team. Nor did it ever take the title as the dominant nation of Yugoslavia. Little wonder the crowd went wild!

It’s going to be interesting to see how the Serbs function in Australia. Apparently they had reached an agreement to shave their heads if they won the Cup — and, moments after they took the title, out came the razors, so they could be embaldened for the Cup presentation. It’s fine indoors, but Melbourne features a lot more ultraviolet light….

France could well be back in the final before the Serbs. After all, they have a lot of young talent in the form of guys like Monfils and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. It might have been a different tie had Tsonga been available. But, for now, their title-less streak extends to nine years, and they have lost the last two finals they have played. For Llodra, and especially for Arnaud Clement, this was probably the last chance.

In the truly minor footnotes, Djokovic picks up just about all the points it’s possible to earn in a Davis Cup contest — he played everything, and won mostly live matches. That gives him more than a hundred additional points, although he won’t move above #3 — he remains far behind #2 Roger Federer. Troicki doesn’t earn as many points — he had just the one win, and since he didn’t play many earlier matches, he doesn’t get any bonus points. But it still appears he should gain a spot or two.

And that, of course, will be the last time a player moves in the rankings this year as a result of an ATP-level match. They’re still playing futures, but we’ll be shifting to Monday-and-Thursday publication for the rest of the season. We’ll be back to regular publication come the new year.

He that will not merry, merry be,

And stand his glass in course,

May he be obliged to drink small beer,

And never a penny in his purse.

Let him be merry, merry, merry there,

And we shall be merry, merry here,

For who can know where we may go

To be merry another year, brave boys,

To be merry another year?

— from Ramsay, The Tea-Table Miscellany (1724)

Topics: Bob Larson, Bogdan, Davis Cup, Davis Cup Team, Davis Cup Tie, Devil Worshiper, Gael Monfils, Gilles Simon, Gubernatorial Race, Improprieties, Janko Tipsarevic, Line Judges, Live Match, Michael Llodra, Minnesota Governor, Novak Djokovic, Serbian, Serbs, Tenths, Thirty Years