TENNIS DAVIS CUP – A scintillating first day to the opening round of the Davis Cup’s World Group has gone to prove that anything can happen in this competition. Bruno Bergareche Sans
A scintillating first day to the opening round of the Davis Cup’s World Group has gone to prove that anything can happen in this competition.
In Frankfurt, France dealt Germany a tough blow in a tie of two classic Davis Cup nations. Gilles Simon put the visitors ahead with another of his gutsy performances, edging past Jan-Lennard Struff 10/8 in the deciding set. The German players and crowd couldn’t recover from such a mammoth blow and Gael Monfils ensured they didn’t get any momentum going by not giving Philipp Kohlchreiber a chance, brushing past the classy German in three straight sets. The baton now passes on to Benjamin Becker and Andre Begemann who have the task of keeping this tie alive when they take on the strong doubles pairing of Julien Benneteau and Nicolas Mahut tomorrow.
One of the big surprises of the day came in Ostrava, where 2012 and 2013 champions, the Czech Republic, face an uphill battle if they want to continue their run in this year’s edition after falling behind 2-0 to Australia. Without their instrumental duo of Tomas Berdych and Radek Stepanek, the Czechs couldn’t match an exciting young Aussie team and find themselves against the ropes. Kokkinakis pulled off the big upset of the day by defeating local favourite Lukas Rosol in five close sets after going two sets to love down. Bernard Tomic made the most of the wave his teammate had created to surf past Jiri Vesely in straight sets. Tomorrow Jan Mertl and Adam Pavlasek square off with Lleyton Hewitt and Sam Groth to decide whether the tie continues into Sunday or reached its finale with the doubles rubber.
Italy recovered from a shaky start in Astana to level things out with Kazakhstan. The much-criticized ‘Russian’ Kazakh side got the day off on the right foot as Mikhail Kukushkin blasted past Simone Bolelli with his heavy hitting, taking the win 7/6 6/1 6/2. Andreas Seppi got his country back in it though with a solid four set win against the dangerous Andrey Golubev. Golubev and Nedovyesov are scheduled to play Fogning and Lorenzi in tomorrow’s doubles although it will be remained to be seen if Italian captain Corrado Barazzutti opts for Australian Open champions Fognini and Bolelli.
A huge rivalry is taking place in Buenos Aires between Argentina and Brazil. In footballing terms it couldn’t come any bigger than this, but the fact is whether it is football, tennis or chess, Argentines and Brazilians have no love lost. So it is almost fitting that the two South American nations head into tomorrow’s doubles all square. Red-hot Joao Souza silenced the crowd momentarily in the opening rubber after ultimately fending off Carlos Berlocq 6/2 in the deciding set. In a reversal of roles, Brazil’s number 1 of the past years Thomaz Bellucci stepped to the court as a very strong number 2 and you could forgive Brazilians for being optimistic (more so after defeating the mighty Spain to book their tickets in the World Group). But Leo Mayer had no intentions of letting his proud nation receive such a bitter blow and fired 38 winners past Bellucci en route to a four set win. Brazil head into the doubles rubber as favourites as Melo/Soares face Schwartzmann/Delbonis.
Talking of rivalries, they don’t get much bigger than Serbia v Croatia. Defeating a side including Djokovic is always going to be a big ask. Attempting it without Marin Cilic and Ivo Karlovic makes it that little bit tougher. Djokovic did his part with an emphatic straight sets win over Mate Delic. But Croatia almost levelled things through their emerging young star Borna Coric, fresh from a great run in Dubai which included a battering of Andy Murray. Coric sailed to a two set lead against Troicki but ran out of gas as the Serbian sailed to a comfortable 6/1 win in the fifth set. Troicki/Zimonjic face Draganja/Skugor in tomorrow’s doubles.
On paper, the weakest tie of the opening round of the World Group is taking place in Liege. With Wawrinka and Federer absent, Belgium are expected to roll over Switzerland into the quarter finals but Henri Laaksonen had a couple of things to say about that. With a ranking of 344, the young Swiss player pulled of one of the shock of the day after recovering from a two set deficit to defeat Ruben Bemelmans. Steve Darcis returned things to normality after only dropping seven games in his win against Michael Lammer. Bemelmans/Desein face Bossel/Lammer in tomorrow’s doubles.
