Mark Lyons Cynthia Lum/WireImage.com
James Blake owns French players while
Marat Safin
goes five sets to defeat Tomas Berdych. As is often the case in Davis Cup, the results did not
go as expected on a freaky Friday across the globe.
The only tie that played to form was the US against France, where the
home team ended up ahead 2-0 behind a huge serving day from Andy Roddick
in a 6-4, 7-6, 7-6 victory over Michael Llodra, and a clutch five-set
win from James Blake, where he fought off two match points to overcome
Paul-Henri Mathieu 7-6, 6-7, 6-3, 3-6, 7-5.
The most shocking result was produced by the indoor loving Robin Soderling
of Sweden, who blew out Jose Acasuso 6-0, 6-4, 6-1 on red clay in Argentina.
Given that Soderling moves poorly and is for all intents and purposes
a pure powerballer, his ability to hit through Acasuso (no great runner
himself) was a total surprise. The tie is level at 1-1 going into Saturday's
doubles as David Nalbandian survived Thomas Johansson 6-2, 5-7, 6-4,
6-2 in the opening rubber.
"He played really well, and I played really bad," Acasuso said.
"I feel bad about letting down the confidence the captain set on
me, but I never felt comfortable in the match. Soderling started very
well and then I could not get into the game."
Argentina captain Alberto Mancini had decided to play Acasuso ahead of
Guillermo Cañas and Juan Monaco and now might have to rethink his Sunday
lineup "There's no reason to think that we can't win at least
one singles on Sunday and in doubles anything can happen" said Swedish
captain Mats Wilander.
Mancini added, "It was a shame that Jose didn’t play well.
He wasn't that good, but we are still confident." The Argentine
captain added that he would team up Nalbandian and Cañas in doubles,
but wouldn't commit to singles player for Sunday.
In Moscow, Marat Safin – who had won all of one match this year – came
back from near death against Tomas Berdych in a 6-7, 4-6, 6-3, 6-2,
6-4 victory in just under four hours.
While Safin has been in poor form this year, he has been a Davis Cup
hero in the past and plays particularly well at home. "It was about
seeing who was stronger in the head," Safin said.
But how clay court maven Igor Andreev fell to Czech veteran Radek Stepanek
6-3, 6-2, 6-4 is anyone's guess. While Stepanek is a diverse player, he
doesn't have Andreev's ability to push men off the court on dirt. But
from the looks of the stats, it appears that Igor bombed away and couldn't
keep enough balls in the court.
"It was a long time ago, I was playing in my first ever Davis Cup
tie, and was up against Mikhail Youzhny and Nikolay Davydenko, who've
both turned out to be two of the world's best players," Stepanek
said. Davydenko is due to partner Mikhail Youzhny in the doubles against
Lukas Dlouhy and Pavel Vizner.
While Spain was favored in Germany, it was expected that No. 1 German
Philip Kohlschreiber would give David Ferrer hell in the second match,
but the Spaniard was too fast and consistent and came though 6-7, 6-3,
6-4, 6-2 to put Spain up 2-0. In the first match, Nadal leveled Nicolas
Kiefer 7-6 (5), 6-0, 6-3. "David was magnificent," said Spanish
captain Emilio Sanchez. "He really played up to his world ranking."
So did Roddick, who staved off Llodra’s gigantic serving day with
one of his own in a rapid-fire three set win. Roddick bombed 30 aces
on the ultra quick court to 25 for Llodra, who loves a quick, airless
surface.
"If you'd told me going into the match to make a prediction I probably
would have said that we'd serve huge, there wouldn't be a lot of breaks
and it's going to come down to a couple of points here and there and I
like my chances there because I've been through it before," Roddick
said. "He's probably the best player they have on this kind of surface
I thought he played well and I had to play really good stuff today to
get through."
Blake, who hadn’t won a five setter until he bested Fabrice Santoro
at the ’07 US Open, has now scored his only three five-sets wins
over Frenchmen: Santoro, Seb Grosjean at the ’08 Aussie Open and
now Mathieu, who served for the match at 5-4 in the fifth set.
"I got down 5-4, but I never wanted to feel out of it," Blake
said. "He was serving very well, but funny things can happen when
you're serving for a match, especially in Davis Cup.
Mathieu added, "We played for like four hours and I don't think we
had differences today. "I don't think he played any better than me."
The U.S. will be looking to close out the tie when Bob and Mike Bryan
(14-1 in DC dubs) face Arnaud Clement and Llodra.
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