Russia at the Davis Cup – 2021: our rivals lost the main star – Carlos Alcaraz passed a positive test for covid
A few days ago, the best tennis players in Russia – Daniil Medvedev and Andrei Rublev – fought at the ATP Final Championship, held in Turin, and now they have to unite in one team to play in the country in the Davis Cup. The third, fourth and fifth numbers of our team are Aslan Karatsev, Karen Khachanov and Evgeny Donskoy.
This year, for the second time in its history, the oldest team tournament is being held in an updated format. The final part is attended by as many as 18 teams, divided into 6 groups. All group winners plus the top two runners-up will advance to the playoffs starting in the quarterfinals. The Russian national team will begin their tournament path in Group A, where our rivals are the teams of Ecuador and Spain. The matches will be played on hard surface at the Kakha Mahika sports complex in Madrid.
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The Russian team will enter the battle on November 27, when athletes from Ecuador will oppose our tennis players. The main matches of the group tournament of the farm the next day, when the Russians will play with the owners of local courts.
Immediately about the main thing. The best tennis player in the history of Spain, Rafael Nadal, will not help the country in the current draw. The great Spaniard holds, probably, the eternal Davis Cup record for victories in a row in both categories. Just think, his current winning streak is 32 matches and started 16 years ago. The last defeat he suffered in 2005 in a doubles match with the Italians Daniele Bracciale and Giorgio Galimberti (6: 4, 4: 6, 2: 6, 6: 4, 7: 9). Since that time, Nadal has not known defeats in both singles and doubles. Together with his team, he won four Davis Cups, including the first tournament in an updated format, which was played in 2019.
In the final with the team of Canada, Rafael, together with Roberto-Bautista Princess, won one singles victory for his country, after which the doubles meeting no longer makes any practical sense. In 2020, the Davis Cup was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic. However, at the end of August, the 35-year-old tennis player published a statement in which he announced the early end of the season due to health problems. For this reason, Nadal was unable to compete in the US Open, the final tournament in Turin, and is now missing the Davis Cup home confrontation with Russia.
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Another winner of the last draw, Bautista-Agut, will not be able to help the national team defend their title. The second number of Spanish tennis withdrew from the Davis Cup due to an injury to the abdominal muscles. The leaders of the Spanish team should be the 20th number of the rating of Pablo Carreño-Busta and the rising star of world tennis Carlos Alcaraz, who has long been appropriated by the press as the “heir of Nadal”.
“The lack of a commander puts us at a disadvantage. He is the best in Davis Cup history. But we have a great team, we are preparing. Alcaraz is a great guy. He is very adaptable and very happy. He will appear and get better.
Confrontation with Russia? I consider them to be opponents who need to be beaten. This is the strongest team. Daniil Medvedev and Andrei Rublev, who are the second and fifth rackets in the world. Karatsev, who is 11th in the ranking and Khachanov, 30th. Russia is the strongest contender. They reached the semifinals in 2019 with only almost one ruble.
In 2021, 30-year-old Carreño-Busta played one of the best tournaments of his life, winning bronze at the Tokyo Olympics. On the way to the main medal in his career, the strong Spaniard knocked Medvedev out of the fight in the quarterfinals, and in the match for third place he was stronger than the best tennis player in the world, Novak Djokovic. It is noteworthy that in the semifinals of the same Olympics, Pablo lost to another Russian, Karen Khachanov.
This time, the nominal leader of the Spanish national team will meet again with Medvedev. And do I need to say once again that this meeting will be fundamental for the 25-year-old Russian? The pain for the defeat at the Olympics is probably still in Medvedev’s heart. The tennis players have already met each other after the Olympic tournament – this happened in mid-August in the Cincinnati quarterfinals, where Daniel exponentially unwound his offender on the court with a score of 6: 1, 6: 1. But now Carreno Busta will have support from the home stands, while Medvedev’s physical condition raises certain concerns. The final season turned out to be too difficult for the first racket of Russia, which was reflected in his play in the final of the Final.
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The second most important match of the program was supposed to be the confrontation between Rublev and Alcaraz, who this season could make his debut for the senior Spanish national team. The 18-year-old child prodigy made a name for himself at the final Grand Slam tournament held on US hard courts. Carlos arrived in New York in the rank of the 55th number of the rating (at the time of the determination of the seeding Alcaraz was in the 73rd place in the rating) and already in the third round crossed with the Greek top Stefanos Tsitsipas. The match lasted five sets, and the Spaniard was more stable in the decisive tie-break.
The Spanish talent did not even think of stopping at the first exit in the fourth round of the major in his career. At the start of the second week of the tournament, the Spaniard won another labor victory – in five sets Carlos broke the resistance of the German Peter Gojovchik – 5: 7, 6: 1, 5: 7, 6: 2, 6: 0. The Spaniard became the youngest quarterfinalist of the US Open since 1963 (before the Open Era, when professionals were admitted to the Grand Slam). At all TBSHs, he is the youngest quarterfinalist after Michael Chang at the US Open – 1990. The Spaniard was prevented from breaking through overvoltage, which forced him to refuse to continue the fight with Felix Auger-Allassim.
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If we talk about the doubles meeting, then the advantage on paper is obvious on the side of the Spaniards. They included the duet played by Feliciano Lopez and Marcel Granollers. It was in this combination that Feliciano and Marseille won three matches out of three years ago, including beating the Russian pair of Rublev and Karen Khachanov. In 2019, Spain and Russia also met in the group stage, and our tennis players lost 1-2. In the first match, Rublev outplayed Bautista-Agut, after which Khachanov lost to Nadal, and the fate of the meeting was decided in the doubles confrontation, which was already mentioned above. The Spaniards have historically been one of the toughest opponents for Russia in the Davis Cup. Of the seven meetings in their use, five have ended.
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All of the above circumstances should have awaited the hardest test, but all the above reasoning fell to dust two days before the match. However, at the last moment, the hosts suffered a massive loss in their ranks, one of the most common causes of the past two years. Alka, 18, has tested positive for coronavirus and will not play for the national team in Madrid.
“Hello everyone, I want to inform you that I have tested positive for COVID-19. This will prevent me from playing in the Davis Cup, which I thought so. On Saturday, when we first met with the team, I had a negative PCR test, every two days I was tested for antigens, they were all negative.
I am sad that I am missing such an important and special tournament for me. As you want, and it must be overcome.
At the moment I am feeling very well, with very mild symptoms, and we will see how the disease progresses. Good luck to the whole team, which I will cheer by watching the games on TV. Thank you all for your support, ”wrote Alcaraz on his Instagram.
Now the coaching staff of the Spanish team will have to think very hard about who will become the second number in their national team. Ramos-Vignolas (who appeared in the disposition after the removal of Bautista-Agut), 40-year-old veteran Lopez, long-term after retirement, and urgently called by the team of Pedro Martinez-Portero.
The Spaniards will have nowhere to take new players. The Spaniards have fallen victim to a complicated tennis calendar and the damned coronavirus. In this case, if at the beginning of the season, then at the beginning of the season, when several events occur, the time of year comes.
Russia – Ecuador (score of personal meetings: 0-0)
In general, our guys should go to the playoffs of the tournament, because the third team in the group looks like an outspoken extra. With all the attention to the Ecuadorian team, which was selected on the basis thanks to the victory over Japan in qualifying, it is unlikely that Emilio Gomez, Roberto Quiros, Diego Hidalgo, Gonzalo Escobar and Antonio Cano March will be able to count on at least one victory in a single match.
November 26, Spain – Ecuador (the start of the first match – at 18:00 Moscow time);
November 27, Russia – Ecuador (the start of the first match – at 18:00 Moscow time);
November 28, Russia – Spain (the start of the first match – at 18:00 Moscow time).
This means that the team that took second place in the group will have a good chance of passing further. This is how the Russian national team went to the playoffs two years earlier, where, as a result, Shamil Tarpishchev’s wards managed to reach the semifinals. The last time the Russian national team won the Davis Cup was 15 years ago. The hike for the third trophy in the history of our tennis will begin on November 27th.