This weekend represented the most important date in the sports calendar, the pinnacle of the professional where champions are crowned and the unworthy vanquished.
It was the Davis Cup Final, my favourite tennis weekend of the year, and something which 99.9% of the country could not care less about. But then, as the old adage goes, wouldn’t it be a boring world if everyone liked the same thing? We all have our favourites, our eccentricities and obsessions and it just so happens that mine is an oft-overlooked team tennis competition.
Despite my loyalty to the Dwight Davis creation, I can understand why it leaves others cold. For a start, Great Britain are hopeless, having lost to minnows Poland and Ukraine in the last year alone. Many argue that tennis, this most individual of sports, just isn’t suited to a team format like the Davis Cup. The competition itself has been pretty roughly treated by the schedulers in recent years, with the quarter and semi-finals due to take place immediately after Wimbledon and the US Open, when the world’s best are at their most fatigued.
This might explain the presence of this year’s two finalists. The hosts were Spain, defending champions and undoubtedly the strongest squad in the competition. The four players selected for the final were Rafael Nadal, Fernando Verdasco, David Ferrer and Feliciano Lopez, but with an astonishing 12 Spaniards in the ATP Top 100, captain Albert Costa really was spoilt for choice.
The contrast with their opponents, the Czech Republic, was stark. The Czech team relied heavily on their pair of talismen, Radek Stepanek and Tomas Berdych. Both are ranked within the world’s Top 20 but, perhaps crucially, neither had made much of an impression in this year’s Grand Slams. Instead, playing together in the Davis Cup, they had created the sensation of the year. Star-studded nations including France, Argentina and Croatia fell to the unstoppable Berd-Step duo. There had been some memorable matches on the way, not least Stepanek’s six-hour, 16-14-in-the-fifth epic against Ivo Karlovic.in the semi-final away in Croatia, while the pair also excelled as a doubles team, unbeaten in eight rubbers.
From a betting perspective, I had been all over the Czech Republic since the quarter-final stage and was sitting pretty with an 16/1 each-way shot that had already placed. Unfortunately, I had also being laying the bejesus out of Spain, mainly banking on Rafael Nadal’s creaking knees ruling him out of the final (they didn’t). Needless to say, I had been laying them at much larger prices than the five-to-one-on (1.2) available just before the final! So a Spain win was very bad, a Czech win very good and seeing as I still made the Czechs a decent bet at market price, I couldn’t even talk myself into laying off some of my not-inconsiderable liability on Spain.
The final itself will surely be remembered for the extraordinary performance of Nadal, whose recent underwhelming form had been the main talking point in men’s tennis. He started the opening singles rubber versus Berdych with a 25:0 index of 19.5- 21 – extraordinary when you consider that the man had been practically unbeatable in best-of-five-sets clay court tennis up until his defeat to Robin Soderling at Roland Garros this year. But then people – myself included – were questioning whether Nadal would ever obtain that level of dominance again - and even giving serious thought to the idea that a lifelong underachiever like Tomas Berdych could defeat the man, away in Barcelona of all places.
The pipedream last until 5-5 in the first set, when at 0-30 down, Nadal produced an astonishing backhand down-the-line that seemed to spark him into life. Gone was tentative Rafa with his weak ground-strokes dropping short, replaced by clay-court warrior that dazzled us all on his way to four successive French Open crowns. He peeled off an astonishing 13 successive games to wipe the floor with Berdych, eventually triumphing 7-5 6-2 6-0 and handing the Spanish the early initiative.
Stepanek was fancied to put up a greater fight against the inconsistent David Ferrer, but contrived to waste a two-sets-to-love lead, falling 8-6 in the fifth. This was one of the great Davis Cup rubbers, with a fervent home crowd propelling their man to victory in spite of some inspired play from his valiant opponent. As much as I would have enjoyed to sit back as a neutral and admire Ferrer’s magnificent comeback, my wallet failed to share this enthusiasm.
Stepanek’s defeat left the Czech Republic with a mountain to climb. Instead, Berd-Step rather meekly surrended to a straight-sets defeat in the doubles and that was all she wrote for this year’s Davis Cup, and indeed the tennis season as a whole. Spain successfully defended their title, but trouble lies ahead, with a first-round tie next year against Roger Federer’s Switzerland. For us Davis Cup nuts, the fun never ends.
JW
Recent Comments