French captain Guy Forget says that the pressure is on host Serbia in this week’s upcoming Davis Cup final.
“If we have pressure the Serbia players might have even more,” said Forget. “We have been talking about the crowd and we know it can get very loud at times. The only way to deal with it is to be quiet and forget about it. If the match gets close any Serbian player will feel the pressure. He is not just playing for himself, he is playing for his friend, he is playing for the whole country and if things don’t go well he will have the feeling to deceive a whole nation and that’s not easy to deal with as well.”
While France is expected to play Gael Monfils and Michael Llodra in singles, Serbia has yet to decide on a No. 2 singles player behind Novak Djokovic. “I spoke to Janko [Tipsarevic] and Viktor [Troicki]. Tomorrow they’re going to have one more practice and then we’re going to make the decision,” said captain Bogdan Obradovic.
Nenad Zimonjic, the doubles veteran who won last week’s ATP Finals with Daniel Nestor, said that Serbia winning the cup for the first time would be a gigantic.
"It's a completely different achievement," Zimonjic said. “But it's the biggest achievement that Serbia has as a country in tennis. I'm looking forward to playing the biggest final in our tennis history. It would mean everything to the players, to the Federation, to people there, to say we are world champions. Maybe not all of them knew what is Davis Cup. Now I believe they know that it's like a world championships in tennis."—Matthew Cronin