Unlikely Davis Cup win for Fernando Verdasco.
November 25th, 2008 Posted in Tennis newsUnlikely Davis Cup win for Fernando Verdasco.
In the list of the ‘tennis headlines you thought you would never see in 2008′ where would this one rank? ‘Ana Ivanovic’s boyfriend, not originally picked for the singles, wins the Davis Cup with his first victory in a live world group singles for the Rafael Nadal-less Spain on an indoor court in Argentina from two sets to one down in the fourth rubber.’ It is a crazy old world.
There were plenty of contenders for the No.1 laurel in the disbelief stakes. ‘Justine Henin retires at the top’ is one; ‘Spaniard wins Wimbledon beating Roger Federer in the greatest final of all time’ another; ‘Martina Navratilova joins I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here’ a third; and ‘LTA employee is paid a 25,000 bonus for failing to meet his targets’ is also right up there. Actually you could go on and on and credulity would be severely stretched.
However, Fernando Verdasco, the world No.16 who has recently begun dating Ivanovic, the former world No.1 from Serbia, defeated Jose Acasuso, the No.48, 6-3, 6-7, 4-6, 6-3, 6-1 to secure Spain its third Davis Cup since 2000, which was its breakthrough year (when a 14-year-old Nadal carried the flag to lead his team onto court for the final against Australia in Barcelona), in circumstances that were quite incredible.
Argentina, as hosts, had the choice of venue and surface. In the anticipation that Nadal would play, they chose a) somewhere indoors and b) on a surface anything other than clay. The choice of Mar Del Plata caused a hissy fit in the home ranks – David Nalbandian for one did not want to play there and walked out after he had been beaten in the doubles on Saturday to much chagrin – and when Nadal’s right knee injury rendered him unavailable to the Spanish team, suddenly the idea of playing on an indoor carpet did not exactly look like the shrewdest move.
One remembers the 2004 final in Seville between Spain and the United States as much for the behaviour of one of the players sitting on the bench as one does for the brilliance of those entrusted with playing. Verdasco, then joined at the hip by a former girlfriend, was so much into the final, it was all anyone could do to restrain him from racing onto the court after each winning Spanish point. Last night, as he was submerged by ecstatic team-mates having confirmed an outrageous victory for Spain, one could only feel as if he’d earned the acclaim the hard way.
When this campaign began, who would have thought the victorious team would read, in order of ranking, David Ferrer, Fernando Verdasco, Feliciano Lopez and Marcel Granollers? To the captain, Emilio Sanchez Vicario, goes enormous credit for his selection of the team for the final and, if this is not too confusing, for the final team. Sanchez believed that, on a reasonably speedy indoor surface, Lopez would be his ace in the pack and the former Wimbledon quarter finalist’s victory over Juan Martin del Potro in the second singles on Friday, buoyed Spain’s prospects.
No team had won a Davis Cup in Argentina for ten years, no captain had done so by leaving his highest ranked singles player on the bench for the first reverse singles. Ferrer had been given a chasing by Nalbandian on Friday, so full marks to Sanchez for plumping for Verdasco, knowing, too, that Acasuso is not exactly the strongest player in a crisis.
The crowd tried to lift the right hander but he was consumed with nerves and Verdasco stood firm and won the fourth and fifth sets at a canter as Acasuso’s ground-strokes disintegrated. And so Spain rejoices. Actually, Nadal won the Cup for them. He was not there in person, but the Wimbledon, Olympic, French Open, Queen’s, Hamburg, Monte Carlo and Barcelona and Toronto champion was the reason Spain won, simply because Argentina was so afraid of him playing that they gave the rest of the team every incentive to show that they could do it without him. On his Indian Ocean beach today, Nadal can be contented with that thought.
