Dispatches From The Davis Cup
The court is fast. Lightning fast, more so than the speedy surface used by Team USA in Portland last December.
And it impacted France, as designed. Richard Gasquet does not seem excited to play on the fast court and captain Guy Forget subbed Michael Llodra against Andy Roddick.
Sign up for my RSS FeedInstead of the anticipated Roddick-James Blake/Gasquet-Jo-Wilfried Tsonga battles, we have Paul-Henri Mathieu-Llodra for France.
If both men bring their serves Friday, Roddick-Llodra will be decided in tiebreaks.
Tough news on Tsonga. If surgery is needed, he likely missed Roland Garros and Wimbledon.
This US team plays its 10th consecutive tie together, remarkable in that the next longest run by any US team is 3.
One of the practice players is David Martin, a lefty brought along to mimic the serve and volley style of Llodra.
Had a chance to talk with Martin after his practice with Roddick (by the way, Martin brought down the house with his Vanilla Ice impression at the official banquet).”
Martin is a 27-year-old Stanford grad who, with partner Scott Lipsky, has raised his doubles rank to a career-best 47.
He represents the earnest doubles player trying to make a living in the game they love through the one necessary means.
While the world’s best men were playing in Indian Wells and Miami for the last month, you know what David Martin has been doing?
Nothing.
The world’s 50th ranked doubles player couldn’t get in to those tournaments.
Why? The new ATP doubles policy that leads to more singles players entering, and losing quickly or withdrawing, from doubles.
Fewer spots means the cutoff is too high for Martin and Lipsky to qualify.
Play Challengers in the meantime? Possible, except the money is so low that the players would struggle to break even. And winning a Challenger would not improve their ranking. Martin said he might consider playing some singles, in the qualies, of Challengers just to get some matches.
This is the other side of the new ATP system: David Martin and his idle March. A premier double player unable to play in the 2 biggest tournaments in the US each spring.
