On the way to work this morning, I was wondering why everyone on the subway and street, including that little old lady whom I pushed out of the way so I could jump into the last seat on the train, was smiling.
Then it dawned on me. It’s Fed Cup week!
I can only wish.
If you think the Davis Cup scenario is frustrating and, at least in the U.S., grim, wait until you get a load of where Fed Cup stands. You’ll get a great sense of that when you open your newspaper on Sunday morning, or flick on the television and go to your favorite sports wrap-up program over the weekend. Fed Cup? What's that, some kind of pie-eating contest?
I want through the standard rant on the poor coverage afforded Davis Cup in a recent post (“Davis Cup Awards Show”), and much of the same applies to Fed Cup. But in some ways, with all due respect to all you Angry Feminists and Hear Me Roar partisans, the sorry state of Fed Cup is slightly more understandable.
Let’s start with this: Until the aftershocks of the tennis boom of the 1970s began to show their real effects (Anna Kournikova, anyone? Let's not all jump on that Comments bar at once!), the women’s game was dominated by the Anglo Axis of Eve (no “L”): The United States and Australia. Fed Cup has been played for 43 years, and for the first 20 of them, only two teams besides the U.S. and Aussies ever won, and it was just once each: South Africa in 1972 and Czechoslovakia in 1975.
In the last two decades, by contrast, the U.S. has won just six times, and Australia hasn’t won at all. Meanwhile Spain took the Cup five times, and France, Russia and Germany twice each. Belgium, the Slovak Republic and Czechoslovakia (before the break-up of that nation) also won the event.
Translation: Fed Cup once was badly hurt by a lack of international depth in the women’s game, but all that has changed - at least some. But come on, editors and television producers, doesn’t the history of the past two decades tell you anything?
There were a few other Fed Cup glitches along the way, starting with the decision to make the format best-of-three rubbers (two singles and a doubles) and to play the competition in one week, at a single, pre-determined host site, as a kind of carnival of the nations.
Incidentally, that's the plan some commentators and pundits advocate for Davis Cup, which I think would be a horrible idea.
In 1995, Fed Cup went to the far more colorful and intriguing format of Davis Cup, which uses a rotating home-and-away format (rules and regs here) and features five matches (four singles and a doubles). The biggest differences now are that Fed Cup has embraced the “weekend format”, with two singles matches on Saturday and two on Sunday, with the doubles as the last match of the tie.
I don’t think this format is as compelling, or as conducive to strategic nuance and subtlety, as the Davis Cup format, which has the same number and kind of matches, but an extra day. That day happens to be Saturday, when the doubles - often, the swing match - is contested in unchallenged glory.
So while I prefer the Davis Cup format, the "new" Fed Cup has been a great addition to the calendar. Granted, there are still serious issues of depth-of-field, not least because Fed Cup (like DC) has such a rich history of top players and world stars banging heads with their respective national federations over the way things are run.
But if you want to see how much fun Fed Cup can deliver, check out last year' final, a tie that was played at Roland Garros, before wildly enthusiastic fans, and decided by a three-set doubles match in which the Russians pulled off a huge upset.
Gee, maybe Dinara Safina should pull aside her brother Marat and give him a few pointers on playing under pressure!
Actually, the previous year the same two teams (with different personnel) met in Moscow and again the doubles became the key result. Since going with the five-match format (1995), the doubles has decided the final round tie on three occasions. I have mixed feelings about this, and prefer the doubles to be the “swing” match, as it is in Davis Cup.
Thoughts, anyone?
Well, however you feel about the all-important doubles issue, how about we ignore the prevailing gestalt out there beyond the cozy confines of TennisWorld. Let’s celebrate Fed Cup this weekend. So what if we’re just a bunch of losers, or some kind of deadbeat club. Fed Cup deserves the support because it’s a great event, no matter what the television programmers or pundits think or say.
So here’s a preview; details of the venues etc. available here.
Italy at France (the French lead in the head-to-head, 6-0):
France, beaten in the last two finals but champs in 2003, is on a roll. I wrote in my soon-to-be-published French Open preview for Tennis'> that this may be the year when the experience and talent of all those terrific, veteran French players bears fruit at Roland Garros, and that holds true for Fed Cup as well.
The Tricolor is anchored by Amelie Mauresmo, and we know how much her recent singles win at the Australian Open meant to her. The only mountain left for Mauresmo to climb is the psychological one of playing her best tennis under the critical eye of the French public. She knows how much a good showing in Fed Cup will help in that struggle when Roland Garros rolls around, and she’s 4-2 against Italy’s top player, Francesca Schiavone.
Italy’s likely No. 2, Flavia Pennetta, is 4-0 in Fed Cup. Nathalie Dechy, her French counterpart, is 12-8, with wins over some big names. Even though Italy’s two players are in the Top 20, this one doesn’t go to the doubles.
Austria at Spain (1-1):
Okay, so it isn’t exactly Yankees vs. Red Sox or Real Madrid vs. Manchester United. Let’s be really perverse here and say that an awful lot will depend on how well Anabel Medina Garrigues takes the left-handed heat of Sylvie “Bam Bam” Bammer. We like Spain, but watch out for that Sandra Klemenschits. She sure is flying under the radar!
USA at Germany (USA leads, 6-4):
You’ve got to love the way Jill Craybas has been playing lately (well, you do if you’re an American). Question: what do Craybas, the Rhode Island Rocket, and Fed Cup stalwart Pam Shriver have in common?
Actually, they have a few things in common. There’s that Fourth of July birthday, for starters; then there’s the longevity; Shriver played well into her 30s, and Craybas presently is 32. Then there’s the fact that each of them has lost only oneFed Cup doubles match. Unfortunately, Craybas has only played one, while Shriver has a glowing 14-1 career Fed Cup doubles record.
So does Craybas have enough firepower to master No, 14 Anna-Lena Groenefeld on red clay? Can Fed Cup rookie Jamea Jackson bear up under the pressure at an away tie, probably matched against Julia Shruff, a woman ranked about 25 spots above Jackson, as well as the other U.S. singles candidate, Shenay Perry?
I’m picking this one with my heart. I say Zina Garrison gets these kids stoked, they all decide to watch Rocky and blast “We Are Family” long into the night after their last official practice, and they go out and win.
Isn’t that what pathetic losers are supposed to do, entertain hopeless dreams? Go Zina!
Russia at Belgium (Belgium leads, 2-1):
Ready, Dinara?
On the face of it, the cup holders would seem to have their work cut out for them. Behind the face of it, the cup holders have their work cut out for them.
Justine Double-D – whoops, make that Double H – and Kim Clijsters are as good a pair of singles players as any nation has put forward since the U.S./Aussie stranglehold on the Fed Cup was broken - or they are as long as one or the other of them doesn’t show up with a debilitating champagne hangover, or get a terrible tummy ache.
But it’s more likely that any window of vulnerability that is likely to open will do so because these international stars have never really professed to be soul sisters, pulling together for the greater glory of the proud nation of Belgium. An upset, a little dissention and blame-shifting and - who knows what might happen?
I like Elena Dementieva as a Fed Cup warrior. She’s 19-7 without anything that can be called a bad loss. Nadia Petrova is an equally impressive 6-1, although she doesn’t have a quality singles win in there and, while she’s made great strides as a competitor in recent months, playing under that flag takes ressure to the next level. Can Petrova beat beat Not So Li’l Kim - never mind the digestively challenged Henin-Hardenne – when all the chips are down?
We'll have post-mortems here Monday. Meanwhile, no blogging tomorrow – I’m traveling. Have a great weekend, everyone.