The Davis Cup draw for 2006 was announced yesterday, and the big winners of the annual lottery were Croatia and the U.S., while the big losers were Spain and Sweden.
Croatia will host Austria, whose best player is Jurgen Melzer, who’s just inside the Top 50 (No. 49) as I write this. The U.S. gets a welcome home tie against Romania, whose top player, Andrei Pavel, is just outside the Mighty-Half-A-Buck (No. 51).
Spain, by contrast, will have to travel to Belarus to face Max Mirnyi and (probably) Vladimir Voltchkov; not exactly a daunting line of opposition for Rafael Nadal et al at face value, but I’m predicting this tie will be held indoors, on very fast carpet or—if Belarus officials can pull a fast one on ITF officials—in an ice hockey rink.
Think that an upset by Belarus is insupportable fantasy? Just look what happened to Spain early this year, just months after that epic final win over the U.S. in Seville. They roll into Slovakia, proud gold-and-red flags aflutter, and get waxed in a first-rounder—mainly because of the Slovaks' home-court advantage.
But there’s more to the potential Spanish dilemma. Davis Cup always features some nasty, reality-show grade politics, and trouble may be brewing in the Spanish camp. Rafael Nadal was strikingly critical of the Spanish Federation’s recent decision to terminate the co-captains, Jordi Arrese and Juan Batista Avendano. You just know trouble is brewing when the politicos so brazenly offend their top player—especially when its as popular and exuberant a guy as Nadal.
The ostensible reason for the terminations: Spain wants to get away from the dual-captaincy (made popular by the Australians, starting with the John Newcombe/Tony Roche co-captaincy), even though the only stain against the Spanish incumbents was the ambush in Slovakia—and hey, the Slovaks are in the final, so you can’t exactly call the loss a disaster.
That smell of a rat? It just got stronger.
It will be interesting to see how Nadal and company react to the Federation’s top choice for the captaincy, Emilio Sanchez. I never like the guy myself—he was, somewhat like his kid sister, Arantxa, a show-off. He played the good-guy role to the hilt in a way that often seemed calculated, and you could always count on him to fold up like a cheap lawn chair under pressure. I have no doubt, though, that he’s capable of working the political angles like a real pro. It will be interesting to see what happens next.
And then we have the curious case of the Swedes. They’ll be rolling their big guns to Argentina, to face certain doom on the clay courts—unless all the Argies players are caught doping and thrown off the tour by the time of the tie. This is a distinct possibility, given their track record.
Seriously, though, Argentina on clay at home is the ultimate Davis Cup nightmare scenario, mitigated only by the fact that Argentina away from home, or on any surface but clay, is your Davis Cup gimme.
Its crazy, but Argentina may be the worst under-performer on the Davis Cup roster. For all the great players Argentina has produced in the Open era, starting with Guillermo Vilas and going through Jose-Luis Clerc and Martin Jaite and Alberto Mancini and Guillermo Coria, the nation has been in exactly one final (a loss to the U.S. in 1981).
A lot of this may have to do with the fact that in the past you often didn’t know from one day to the next whether or not Argentina still was a nation (or a solvent one, at any rate). That could put a damper on patriotism and all that other jingoistic, Davis Cup business. But come on . . . all those clay-court titans and not a single DC title? It boggles the mind.
By the way, is anyone else amazed at the way Sweden, a nation in which tennis was practically invented by those clay-court icons, Bjorn Borg and Mats Wilander, has morphed into Fast Court Nation—led by the likes of Thomas Johansson and Joachim Johansson, the former an Aussie Open champ and the latter an out-of-the-tree server?
It must be that the amount of hours aspiring Swedish players must spend indoors in the cold months has a larger impact on their games than does tradition—or the preponderance of outdoor clay courts in their fair nation.
Any thoughts, Swedish friends?
Correction: My apologies for incorrectly listing Croatia as the host of its first-round 2006 Davis Cup tie vs. Austria.
Austria's home ground advantage certainly lessens the degree to which Croatia is apt to be favored (see my post below, "Fast Court Nation"), but I think the Croatians will still be heavy favorites. Austria will almost certainly opt to stage the tie on clay, but the Croatians all grew up playing on the stuff, even though Croatian top dog Ivan Ljubicic has posted such great hard court results.