Posted by Peter Bodo, TENNIS.com
It's official -- they blew the final whistle on tennis for 2006 in Moscow on Sunday, and it couldn't have come much later. Russia and Argentina (the Boston Red Sox of Davis Cup: 52 years played, zero final-round wins) went down to the wire, with Marat Safin rescuing a dodgy year with a four-set win over Jose "Chucho" Acasuso in the fifth and deciding rubber.
The outcome was a tribute to the unique, compelling nature of Davis Cup in a couple of ways. Playing with your nation's name on the scoreboard (instead of your own), with a bench full of hopeful teammates and a coach looking on, and a sometimes frenzied crowd hanging on your every forehand -- in either a good way (win one for us who adore you!) or a bad one (take that stinkin' crapola back to Argentina, you Pompous Paramour of the Pampas!) -- fills Davis Cup with elements you won't find on Court 11 at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center (USTABJKNTC for short), which is the customary habitat of some Davis Cup heroes, or even on Centre Court at Wimbledon.
In Davis Cup, you don't need to win three or four or six matches to emerge as a national hero, the way you might with a good run at a tournament, even a Grand Slam event. All you need to do is play out of your gourd at one critical moment and, in almost every nation, with the possible exception of the U.S., you're an overnight rock star. Just ask Mikhail Youzhny, who in 2002 made Russia only the 10th nation to win the Cup with a gut-wrenching five-set win over Paul-Henri Mathieu of France in the fifth and final match.
Or ask Chucho, who sat on the Argentine bench, clutching his head with both hands, while the Russian squad lofted Safin on its shoulders and paraded him around the Olympic Stadium for the faithful Muscovites.
It was probably a mistake that Argentina chose to play a guy who was making just his third singles start in Davis Cup. Sure, Acasuso was 2-0 going in, ranked No. 27 (one measly notch below Safin), and armed with a 2-1 head-to-head against Safin. Sure, Juan Ignacio Chela got waxed, but good, by Nikolay Davydenko in the first match of this tie. Sure, Acasuso is a flashy ball striker who (unlike Chela) may be more confident and dangerous on faster, hard and indoor-carpet surfaces. But throwing Acasuso into the critical match seemed a desperation move, with Tora! Tora! Tora! written all over it.
Granted, Chela struggled in that first match with Kolya the Obscure. But he had the redemption motive going, along with a feeling for the court and a few hours of match play to purge his nerves. Acasuso was a curveball to throw at Safin. But you're in trouble when the basis of your game plan is trying to throw off your opponent; it's reactive and, in this case, it puts a load of pressure on your guy, who goes in feeling like a lab rat.
By contrast, Russian captain Shamil Tarpischev played it straight, and his thought process could have gone something like this: OK, Safin has struggled this year. He stunk the joint out even worse than that guy Chela in his first match. (Safin lost to David Nalbandian in three listless sets on the first day of competition.) I could get cute, and go with, oh, Dmitry Tursunov, who had such a hot hand in our last tie …
But, as he explained later: "What spoke in favor of Marat was the expertise he had in such matches. He went through all the trials and tribulations in his career. He had more expertise. It was clear to me that he could be playing a bit worse or a bit better, but he can't just fail in such kind of match."
In this, Tarpischev was observing Rule No. 1 of coaching: don't over-coach. As a result, Russia won its second Davis Cup in four final rounds since 1994. How do you say "Vince Lombardi" in Russian?
