Posted by Peter Bodo, TENNIS.com
Argentina is by all counts the best tennis nation that has never won the Davis Cup. If you have any doubts about the value of home-field advantage in the competition (in other words, if you believe that holding the international competition as a kind of mega-tournament at a neutral site would not significantly alter the spirit of the competition), I can only point out that the three times Argentina has been to the finals and lost, it was always on away ground.
So, Argentina finally has a chance to clinch the Cup in a tie with Spain at Mar del Plata, which is (fittingly enough) the home town of Guillermo Vilas, the seminal figure in the rise of Argentina as an international tennis power. It's a nice symbolic omen, but the final is overflowing with considerably more concrete indications that Argentina will finally win the Cup.
Those other powerful arguments include the fact that Spain will compete without its (and everyone else's) No. 1, Rafael Nadal (he's sidelined with tendinitis of the right knee), and that the Argentine stalwart, David Nalbandian, has always been dangerous on fast courts. He's an anomaly because Argentina's traditional surface is clay and its finest Open-era players (Vilas and that other dirt devil, Jose-Luis Clerc) thrived on it.
But that discussion also brings us to the key player for Argentina in this tie: Juan Martin del Potro. In the weeks after Wimbledon, del Potro won four consecutive ATP events, finally running out of gas at the U.S. Open -- yet even there, he hammered his way to the quarterfinals, losing to eventual runner-up Andy Murray. This represented one of the greatest quantum leaps in recent memory: Going into Wimbledon, del Potro was ranked No. 65 in the world; leaving New York, he had climbed to No. 13.
Del Potro is just what the doctor ordered for Argentina, as well as for Nalbandian, who's done yeoman's work in Davis Cup, often to no avail for lack of a strong No. 2 to back him up. I have a funny feeling that Nalbandian doesn't at all mind being relegated to the No. 2 singles. Remember, this is a guy who's dangerous almost in direct proportion to the degree to which he's flying under the radar.
The stars are really aligned for a del Potro Davis Cup breakout this weekend. The only thing that might derail him is pressure, for few nations have gone into a final so clearly in charge of their own destiny. When it comes to surface proficiency, del Potro is right up there with Nalbandian as an unlikely master of the hard court. In his final four regular-season tournament appearances, del Potro was a finalist in Tokyo, forced to default with a minor injury in Vienna, a quarterfinalist in the Madrid Masters and a semifinalist in Basel (where he lost to -- you guessed it! --David Nalbandian).Those were all hard-court events.
Nalbandian has a tough assignment on Friday, going up against David Ferrer, one of the few guys who has his number (Ferrer leads their head-to-head 6-3). Del Potro follows against Feliciano Lopez, a flashy player who's often been accused of coming up short in a gut-check. The one thing we know for sure about Davis Cup is that nothing is certain until it is, but del Potro has shown the kind of grit, focus and aplomb that suggests he might easily brush aside Lopez, which -- if it happens -- would leave del Potro perfectly positioned to emerge as the hero of this tie.
Earlier this week in practice, del Potro bit his tongue and bled all over the court, but I have a feeling that starting today, it will be Spanish blood wasted on that indoor hard court in Argentina.
Peter Bodo
