Russia gambles on Safin for Davis Cup
Published 10 April, 2008, 21:30
Out-of -form Marat Safin will lead Russia’s Davis Cup team against the Czech Republic after the country’s top player, Nikolay Davydenko, withdrew from the Moscow tie.
Russia’s team captain, Shamil Tarpischev is known on the Davis Cup circuit, as one of the games master tacticians.
But no one could have expected him to nominate the woefully out of form Marat Safin for the opening singles, when he had the likes Nikolay Davydenko and Mikhail Youzhny, both ranked in the world's top 11, at his disposal.
It’s quite a gamble by Tarpischev to include Safin, while he's slipped to 87 in the world rankings. However, the Russian tends to get more of these decisions right, than wrong.
Up against Safin, will be the Czech Republic’s number one, Tomas Berdych, who’s fresh from a good run in Miami.
The world number nine expects a tough match, despite Safin’s recent woes, and believes the pressure will be well and truly on the Russian’s broad shoulders to win.
The second opening singles match-up sees Radek Stepanek against Igor Andreev, which will be a tough match to call for a number of reasons.
Both are more than at home on the red clay on which the tie will be played, while there is only one place separating the two in the world rankings.
Stepanek is the more experienced, but Andreev will have the vast majority of the crowd behind him. Despite winning his second Masters Series event last week in Miami, Nikolay Davydenko wasn’t too surprised at being left out of the opening singles.
The world number 4 revealing that he’d only arrived in Moscow on Tuesday, and has only had a few days to adjust to playing on a completely different surface.
Davydenko may be in action on Saturday. The doubles sees a provisional Russian pairing of the world number four and Mikhail Youzhny, who are both more at home playing singles, up against the Czech Republic’s doubles specialists of Lukas Dlouhy and Pavel Vizner.
A place in the semi-finals awaits the winners. If the Czech Republic is to get to the last four, they will have to do what no team has managed since 1995, and beat Russia at home.
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