Serbia and France are knotted at 1-1 after Gael Monfils and Novak Djokovic both scored straight set victories in the Davis Cup final in Belgrade.
First, French No. 1 Monfils crushed Janko Tipsarevic 6-1, 7-6 (4) , 6-0, and then Serbian No. 1 Djokovic defeated Gilles Simon 6-3, 6-1, 7-5.
"Honestly, I don't know whether I should play and what to expect, it's up to team captain Bogdan Obradovic," Tipsarevic said. “I will also speak to Viktor Troicki and see how he feels after Saturday's doubles. Stage fright is not the main reason for my bad performance though, quite simply I lost to a better player today and all credit to Monfils. I was feeling the ball well, but I felt I was missing matches. I was too much into my own head and I got lost in that."
Djokovic, who played brilliantly most of the day, failed to serve out the third set at 5-4 against Simon, but then broke the Frenchman back to 6-5 and closed it out in his next service game
"It was a terrific performance and at 5-4 it’s normal to drop your level a bit,” Djokovic said. “But I served really well and when I needed to I made some good stokes and felt in control of the game."
Serbia may call on Djokovic to play doubles with Nenad Zimonjic instead of its original team of Zimonjic/Viktor Troicki against the experienced French duo of Arnaud Clement and Michael Llodra. Djokovic and Zimonjic have played three ties together, winning matches against Australia and Russia but losing their last match in the 2010 semifinals against Czechs Tomas Berdych/Radek Stepanek. Zimonjic and Troicki are 2-0 together.
"Well, it's open," said Djokovic. "We'll discuss it tonight and find the best possible solution and see what we're going to do about that. Definitely we need to try to get a win tomorrow. It's going to be very important for us to get a 2-1 lead going into the last two matches."
Obradovic added: “Novak played really good. Three very quick sets for Davis Cup. He saved a lot of energy for maybe tomorrow, maybe the day after tomorrow.”
French captain Guy Forget has said he may consider playing Llodra in Sunday's singles.—Matthew Cronin