Safinista!

Okay, everyone, I hope you had a great Easter, Passover, Whatever (a nice weekend free of Holiday or Holy Day obligations?). We had a family Easter gathering, although my family is pretty expert at stripping religious associations from religious holidays; to them the salutation He is Risen! means, Wow, the Easter Bunny Woke up and left Lots of Chocolate! I don't buck the gestalt, although my Evil Twin wanted to just throw out something on that Barack Obama as Jesus Christ statue, just to see what happens when you mixed politics, religion and the usual family-based angst and sensitives in one big honkin' invitation to scream and shout at each other. I refrained. How mature am I?

We had pretty wild weather in game-Rich Andes; Cowboy Luke went on his Easter egg hunt in a ski parka and gloves (no, that's not him in the picture), in one of those snow squalls in which the flakes are flying sideways, you can barely see a hand in front of your face, and you could easily mistake a bead of deer poop for a Raisenette (which is easy to do under the best of conditions) -  provided you could see it. It was a good weekend, I did a lot of dishes and was left wondering if, with the help of some redneck ingenuity, I could strip the insides of a refrigerator and turn it, with the help of some duct tape and sections of garden hose, into a dishwasher. Those big pots and platters are a bear to wash!

I watched some of the Davis Cup, happy to see James Blake step up and win a singles match that actually counted for something. Now I think the U.S. is as well-positioned as at any time in recent years to win the Cup. The intriguing question is what surface Captain Mats will choose - ultra-slow clay to make the U.S. players as uncomfortable and hesitant as possible? A fast indoor court, based on how well the Swedes performed this time around? How about grass, if they could find the stuff in Sweden in September, with old-guy Bjorkman playing singles and doubles?

Clay appears to be the no-brainer, but in Davis Cup the Swedes aren't afraid to roll the die. And while fast indoor carpet was the logical choice for their tie against Argentina, the performance of the Swedish players on the fast surface was still noteworthy: David Nalbandian is Argentina's big singles gun (he had a 12-2 DC singles record going in), and the high points on his resume are a Wimbledon final and YEC victory on indoor carpet. He is the mold-breaking South American, and for that he doesn't get enough credit.

The tie I found most intriguing was Russia vs. France, even if you keep in mind that France is capable of stinking up the joint against anyone, anywhere, anytime. Does any nation produce comparable numbers of gifted players who can't win squat? The tantalizing story line going in was that France captain Guy Forget wanted his best singles players available for service, even if it meant diminishing France's chance to win the doubles. I thought that was a key miscalculation, given the tremendous impact doubles, the pivotal "swing match" when a tie is locked at 1-1, can have. Well, the nightmare scenario for Forget came to fruition: the first-day singles were a split (it was the only tie of the quarterfinals in which that happened, meaning it was the tie that had a critical doubles match). Mr. Forget out-thunk himself, if not Russia.

But the real stroke of genius was once again provided by Russia captain Shamil Trapischev. He inserted Marat Safin, the Marquis de Safin (kick me, disappoint me, shatter my hopes, Marat, I will still always love you like a true Safinista), into the third-day program to play the decisive match. Okay, it's fun to rag on Marat for being such a knucklehead (hey, he gets all the chicas, fair is fair!). But it was brilliant of Tarpischev to hand him the ball with the game on the line because Safin has a champion's aura.

Suddenly, Paul-Henri Mathieu found himself facing one of the finest one-match players in the contemporary era - a multiple Grand Slam champion, playing in front of his home crowd. And I can only imagine how pumped Safin must have felt about being so honored, although it couldn't have hurt his  confidence when he saw he would be playing PHM.  The French lad had played two previous fifth-set matches with the tie on the line and lost both to - yep, you guessed it - Russians!

That Marat, he didn't just fall off the turnip truck.

Safin may be an under-achiever, but he's no choker. He showed that again on Sunday. So Sweden will host the U.S. in one semifinal, and Russia will welcome Germany (probably back to Moscow). The Germans once again showed uncharacteristic team spirit and solidarity in crushing Belgium as if it were a nation just slightly larger than Canada's Somerset Island. Russia will be a big ask, though.

But stranger things have happened. Just ask the Swedes.