Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Valuable Lessons From Davis Cup Weekend
The Davis Cup weekend is over, resulting in some exciting quarterfinal ties to which fans can look forward in September. I was lucky enough to witness the USA vs. Switzerland tie live in Birmingham, Alabama. The weekend only confirmed what I have personally experienced as a player, as a coach, and as a fan over the years: in terms of a weekend of excitement and high quality tennis, nothing gets better than the Davis Cup.
This weekend's Davis Cup ties did more than just confirm what I already knew; they also provided some valuable lessons to the federations, coaches, fans, and players. Some of them were new lessons; some of them were simple confirmations of old lessons.
Let's begin with Birmingham. Tickets sold-out within two hours for this event. Sure, one can argue that Roger Federer's expected presence during the tie helped boost ticket sales. But sold-out within two hours, more than a month ahead? It's a bit more than the name of Federer at play in this case. Birmingham was the perfect choice, a town starved for high quality tennis competition, having only been exposed to a challenger-level ATP tournament for over a decade that ended back in 2003.
The crowd was fantastic and the Swiss visitors to whom I talked seemed to enjoy Birmingham and all that it had to offer (Civil Rights museum, Vulcan, etc.) without having to worry about neither cold weather (how about over 70 degrees?) nor any crazy traffic despite being in a city. Tournament organizers were happy and the American team, especially Patrick McEnroe and Andy Roddick, could not say enough about the crowd. USTA got it right on this one and they should consider Birmingham for future events.
As for Switzerland, they made the American victory a lot tougher than expected, in the absence of Roger Federer. The expectation was that the tie would be over by Saturday, with a straight-set victory by the Bryan brothers. Swiss made a match of it, winning a match on Friday, extending the Bryan brothers to a fourth set tiebreaker, and finally succumbing on Sunday following a remarkable performance by Roddick to close the door on Stanislas Wawrinka.
Switzerland did this with a Wawrinka that has not played an ATP match since January due to injury, and only four matches since October of last year, and with Marco Chiudinelli, who came back from a massive knee injury suffered back in 2007. The lesson here is that there is life after Federer. If they can stay injury-free and develop their games further, the Swiss can actually field a competitive team who can win matches and cause pain to some other traditionally powerful Davis Cup teams. If Federer can play, that is icing on the cake.
One obvious lesson: put your best team out there. In other words, find incentives and do whatever you can to get your best players to play. Historically, the USA has suffered from not being able to put the best team out there consistently. Ironically, this was the reverse case, for one weekend. The USA had its best team against a short-handed Swiss team. As usual in these cases, the "best" team triumphed.
Speaking of the crowd factor, Sweden learnt a lesson the hardest way possible this weekend. The tie between Sweden and Israel was played in front of empty seats, a decision taken by Malmo City committee. Israel won 3-2 the closest and most exciting Davis Cup match never to be witnessed by a live crowd.
On Sunday, Dudi Sela and Harel Levy both won five-set thrillers to carry Israel to the quarterfinals. Couple of lessons to learn here; leave politics out of sports and under any circumstances, don't let some city council comprised of individuals who have no clue on a crucial sports event like a Davis Cup tie make such an important decision like whether fans should be allowed or not. The famous Swedish fan spirit might have been just enough to push a tired Thomas Johansson to a win the fifth set against Sela, or help get Andreas Vinciguerra get the final break at 4-4 or 5-5 in the final sets when he had break opportunities, instead of Levy getting it at 7-6 to win the final set.
As to lessons that were confirmed, the surface once again played a big role. The French, clearly the better team on paper (Captain Guy Forget even called it his dream team), lost to Czech Republic on a fast carpet surface in Ostrava. Argentina and Spain, as usual, rolled over opponents on their home courts, on the slow, red clay. Anyone want to bet that Czech Republic, who will get to play at home next round against Argentina, is going to remain with carpet? Will the odds-makers bother to come up with the odds of Germany beating Spain, on clay in Spain?
Croatia has a tougher decision to make on the question of surface when they face USA at home in September. If they want the Americans to suffer, they should pick clay. However, that should make Croatians suffer somewhat also, as Marin Cilic and Mario Ancic are better players on fast surfaces. They need to decide whether the advantages of being a sadist outweigh the disadvantages of being a masochist in this case. If so, play on clay!
On last lesson for the fans: predicting Davis Cup results is one of the toughest tasks in tennis. Don't take my word for it, go ahead and fill your bracket for the rest of the draw and see how it will turn out at the end of the year. Surface, time gaps, team compositions, and the different format present endless challenges to the expert tennis follower.