Davis Cup Review
September 28, 2008 by Jeremy Howard
Well, as Meatloaf once said…”Two outta three, ain’t bad.” Late last week, I made my predictions on the Davis Cup Semifinals, as well as the Great Britain/Austria Playoff Tie, and as you can guess, correctly predicted two of them.
Not only was I correct in picking Argentina to defeat Russia, but I was also accurate when I thought the match would come down to the wire. The Tie started out heavily in Argentina’s favor, when Nalbandian and del Potro destroyed both Andreev and Davydenko, respectively, in straight sets to take a 2-0 lead heading to the doubles. On Saturday, they almost sealed the victory when Nalbandian and Canas battled back from two sets to love down against Kunitsyn and Tursonov. However, the Russian duo was able to secure the victory. First up on Sunday, Davydenko showed some grit in grinding down a weary Nalbandian in four sets to set up a live rubber between del Potro and Andreev. Much to the home crowd’s delight, this was never really a match, with del Potro sending Argentina through to the finals with an easy, straight set victory.
Argentina who will be facing Spain, who defeated the defending champions from the U.S. with relative ease, although not the drubbing I thought it would be. Sam Querrey, forced to make his Davis Cup debut in Spain, against Rafael Nadal, performed far beyond expectations and actually took the first set off the world no. 1. Nadal rebounded to win the next three, but it was still tightly played. Roddick also played well, and took Ferrer too the limit before going down 8-6 in the fifth. The new duo of Fish and Mike Bryan did well to capture the doubles on Saturday, and give the Americans life heading into reverse singles. However, Nadal absolutely annilahted Roddick in the opening match to send the Spaniards to the finals (Querrey lost the final rubber in two tiebreakers to Lopez).
Roddick’s opening day match was the real heartbreaker. If he had been able to beat Ferrer, and assuming Fish & Bryan still would have won the doubles match, the American’s would have had a fighting chance on Sunday, only needing to win one singles match (I don’t actually think they would have, but I knew down 2-1, there was NO way they were going to win both singles matches).
Finally, there was my incorrect prediction of the Brits being able to defeat Austria at Wimbledon. I was spot on when I wrote that Andy Murray would win both of his singles matches, however no Jurgen Meltzer was a bit too much for the rest of the Brits. He defeated Alex Bogdanovic on day one and teamed with Julian Knowle to win the doubles match. The Tie came down to the 5th rubber Bogdanovic and Alexander Peya (Peya is actually ranked two spots lower than Bogdanovic at 164th), and Bogdanovic could not deliver a victory for the hometown crowd, going down in four sets to send Great Britain to the Zonal Group next year.
Other Playoff winners, in addiction to Austria, include: Chile, Switzerland, Croatia, Israel, Netherlands, Romania & Serbia; all of whom will play in the Main World Group in 2009.
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