Davis Cup Quarterfinals 2014…
Davis Cup is its own beast. Rankings means little, home court is vital, team spirit is suddenly everything. When you looked at the match-ups beforehand there were quite obvious favorites in all but one match (Great Britain vs Italy).
But…this is Davis Cup. So it so happens that France, with Benneteau and Tsonga, lost 0-2 to Germany who were without Haas, Kohlschreiber and Mayer! Tsonga said about his match against 119-ranked Peter Gojowczyk :
“It’s clear that this was one of those matches one can classify as unloseable and yet I lost it”
This was very unexpected of course, but almost equally unexpected was it that Benneateau would go down in three straight sets to Kamke.
Talk about an uphill battle for the French!
The Davis Cup factor was also evident in the “cleanest” match-up of the weekend, Switzerland vs Kazakhstan. Grand Slam champion (still not really used to writing that) Stanislas Wavrinka was up against #64-ranked Golubev, but for some reason the Swiss couldn’t find his groove while the Kazak played the match of his life and won in four sets.
Federer came back and steadied the ship with a comfortable straight sets win against Kukushkin, but I’m sure the Swiss would have appreciated and partly expected a 2-0 lead before the doubles. We’ll see if Wavrinka is in better form today, playing with Federer.
But at the time of writing this, they’re down 5-3 in the first set which makes me think that this could be the BIG upset of the weekend.
The other quarterfinal matches:
Czech Republic are already through with 3-0 against Japan.
Great Britain is at 1-1 which was expected with Murray winning and Ward losing.
Lots at stake in the doubles today!
