Davis Cup kicks in again this week with ranking points looming in the future but without a player who could have gummed up the works.<\/b><\/p>\n
Yes, it\u2019s time for the second of four Davis Cup weekends this year and visions of five set, knock down, drag out matches with four of the best fast court players on a slick indoor surface were dancing through my head. Maybe Jo-Wilfried Tsonga<\/b> and Andy Roddick<\/b> will have a 38 point tiebreaker in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, just like the one they had at the Australian Open last year. Maybe Roddick will go down a set and a break to Jo-Willy again before crawling through in four sets just as he did in Australia but maybe, maybe, this time he doesn\u2019t crawl through.<\/p>\n
Maybe Roddick will have another fit about a bad line call like he did in that 38 point tiebreaker \u2013 no, scratch that, Hawkeye this time \u2013 maybe he\u2019ll have a fit about something else. Because maybe Jo-Willy pulls out another wondrous performance to match this year\u2019s Aussie Open and Roddick gets frustrated and throws his racket then has a fit in the post match media session.<\/p>\n
Maybe Jo-Willy will take care of James Blake<\/b> too leaving the U.S. boys in the precarious position of having to beat Richard Gasquet<\/b> in both singles matches and getting us all excited again because Jo-Willy will have taken a step closer to the promise land of promise fulfilled.<\/p>\n
Maybe I should get over this pinched nerve that has me lying horizontal much of the day leaving me with little to do but mentally practice my tennis game and anticipate the U.S. – France Davis Cup tie because Jo-Willy won\u2019t be showing up. He has a knee injury.<\/p>\n
Paul-Henri Mathieu<\/b> gets the upgrade to singles and he\u2019s a bit harder to get excited about. He hasn\u2019t beaten Roddick since 2005 and he lost his only match to Blake. He\u2019s better than average on indoor hard courts – he had a semifinal this year in Marseille and he had a final in Moscow last year – but it\u2019s just not the same.<\/p>\n
Oh well, maybe Roddick and Gasquet will have another five set marathon with two tiebreakers and an 8-6 fifth set just like they did at Wimbledon last year and maybe Gasquet will let out another primal scream as his backhand flies down the line and out of Roddick\u2019s reach on the way to an uplifting win. I\u2019d put my money on the over for a five set match because one third of Gasquet\u2019s nine Davis Cup singles matches have gone five sets and that\u2019s all I\u2019m really asking for: a bit of drama.<\/p>\n
Blake\u2019s matches with Gasquet have been straight set, one-sided affairs so I\u2019m not looking for drama there. Bob<\/b> and Mike Bryan<\/b> lost to this week\u2019s French doubles team of Michael Llodra<\/b and Arnaud Clement<\/b> at Wimbledon last year and, by my count, the brothers have a losing record against them so that could be exciting.<\/p>\n
Tsonga could have gummed up the works by taking a few singles matches and Clement\/Llodra could still gum it up if they can take out the brothers, so I\u2019ll settle for that.<\/p>\n
Davis Cup Ranking Point<\/b><\/p>\n
Remember a few months ago when we were all taking sides about the future of Davis Cup? Maybe Davis Cup should morph into a year-end team event or maybe we should keep the current format but fix the final geographically so we can market it a year in advance instead of only the few months between the semifinal and the final.<\/p>\n
Maybe Davis Cup should hand out ranking points so top players would turn up now and then. Nah, too hard. It isn\u2019t fair to players who don\u2019t get onto a Davis Cup team. I guess it wasn’t that hard because starting next year, players will get ATP ranking points for playing Davis Cup.<\/p>\n
If a player\u2019s team won the Cup and the player won eight live singles rubbers \u2013 the most you could play in four ties \u2013 that would earn him 625 points which is a lot of points but it\u2019s pretty unlikely, especially as dead rubbers don’t qualify for ranking points. Winning seven rubbers is more doable because Roddick did it last year and his team also won the Cup so he would get 500 points if he does that again next year and that\u2019s not bad.<\/p>\n
Davis Cup will count as one of the ATP 500 level tournaments and that means a player\u2019s accumulated Davis Cup points would be the same as if he played one tournament. That also means those points would only count if it was one of the player\u2019s best ATP 500 level tournament results because that\u2019s how rankings work. Currently, for instance, only points from the player\u2019s top five International Series tournaments count toward his ranking.<\/p>\n
All in all, especially since most players skip a Davis Cup tie or two each year, the rankings won\u2019t be that significant. The system doesn\u2019t add points to a player\u2019s ranking, it just gives a player another tournament from which to pick his best results.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s okay, though, mainly because I\u2019ve decided I like Davis Cup just like it is \u2013 geographically diverse with crazy fans traipsing all over the world to wear nets on their head and generally act like tennis\u2019 version of a rabid soccer fan \u2013 in other words, the most polite sports fans in the world outside of polo spectators.<\/p>\n
I also think they handled the inequity problem for players who can’t get on a Davis Cup team because Davis Cup players don\u2019t get additional points as much as they get an opportunity at a better result in one more tournament. What do you think about all this rankings stuff?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Davis Cup kicks in again this week with ranking points looming in the future but without a player who could have gummed up the works. Yes, it\u2019s time for the second of four Davis Cup weekends this year and visions of five set, knock down, drag out matches with four of the best fast court […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/867\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}