* !104216929 by Pete Bodo*
The only trouble with taking full advantage of the home-court advantage in Davis Cup play is that in screwing with your opponents' minds (or bodies) and laying a trap for them can also present your own squad with disadvantages borne of the prevalent conditions. Thus, you end up with a wash—biting off your nose to spite your face and all that.
That seeemed to be the theme in today's first rubber between the United States, represented by Mardy Fish, and Colombia, featuring Alejandro "the guy who was two sets up on Roger Federer at Wimbledon" Falla, who is not to be confused with the U.S.'s Robert "the guy who was two sets up on Rafa Nadal at Wimbledon" Kendrick.
The Colombians chose to play this tie on slow red clay—no surprise in that. But they decided to stage the matches in Bogota's Plaza de Toros la Santamaria, one of the best-looking and prettiest-sounding of venues in this global game. The only glitch being that 8,000-plus foot altitude certainly favored the lanky, loose-limbed, rocket-firing U.S. players.
No problem, Colombia seemed to figure, we'll just use pressureless Tretorn balls to neutralize the extra speed at which the balls will travel at that altitude. The North Americans may have trouble acclimating to the conditions, especially because most of them are coming fresh off the US Open (which was played roughly 8,000 feet closer to sea level). Well, from the looks of things, this combination of altitude and balls that are like little rocks messed with everyone's game and mind. Not since the heyday of Juan Balcells has baseline grinding played so minor a role in a match featuring at least one Spanish-speaking player on red clay. Ultimately, it's all worked out alright so far for the U.S. squad, as Mardy Fish won the opening tie, a five-set cliff-hanger, 4-6, 6-1, 6-4, 3-6, 6-4 in the fifth.
I'm not sure how to describe the effect achieved by the combination off altitude and pressureless balls. But having watched the match, it seemed like both players lived in moment-to-moment terror of not taking enough of a swing or taking too much of one, sometimes articulating that conflict in the same stroke. The balls certainly were a wild-card factor. They even sound different when hit, with a deeper, less crisp, almost hollow pop, the kind you hear when you inadvertently strike a broken ball, or one that's been played so heavily that it's dead (we've all been there, right?).
At the same time, the match produced the predictable share of fliers—balls that just seemed to zip out over the lines, as if they were sentient beings making a break for freedom. And it didn't seem like any of those customary controls, topspin or slice, had much of an effect when a ball got the liberation notion. This affected both players equally, and when that's the case it's usually the more talented, artful player who prevails. And Fish is nothing but talented. Falla, who's more of a bread-and-butter baseliner, was more inhibited. Take away a baseliner's feeling that he's consistent enough to take a big cut, loading up the ball with action, and keep it between the lines and you've got him unsure and agitated.
Thus, it often seemed that one or both players thought they were playing with a trick ball that was programmed to unexpectedly explode at some point, leaving the unlucky guy who happened to hit it last covered in some stinky gel or worse.
Falla fell behind, two sets to one, which kept the hometown partisans somewhat muted, but he built a 5-3 lead in the fourth set. But he then played a lousy game to fall behind 0-40, setting Fish up to even the set. But Fish fell victim to the omni-present tug between playing to win and playing not to lose, and he chose the latter. He was over-cautious, and he ended up allowing Falla to hold—and sending the match into a decisive fifth set. That often provides Davis Cup players on home soil with a major emotional boost. If it happened in Bogota, Falla might have pulled it out.
Fish continued to play a little more defensively than I thought he needed; once again, he seemed determined to play an opponent stroke-for-stroke from the baseline, just because he can—or now thinks he can, in his new, fitter mode. This time, his versatility and the conditions helped Fish pull it off, for Falla seemed just as eager to avoid launching the inevitable high-altitude fliers as did Fish. And Mardy just had a bit too much all-around skill for Falla to get away with playing conservative tennis. Although he looked shaky at times, Fish played positive tennis at the end, and that's not always easy on foreign soil in Davis Cup, although my feeling is that it's always the home team that's under pressure—especially if it's the clear favorite.
All in all, it was a good start to Davis Cup, featuring many signature qualities of Davis Cup play, starting with the ins and outs of home-ground advantage. And in all fairness to Colombia, perhaps their choice of ground was less Machiavellian than it appeared. To my mind, they would have been much better playing as close to sea level as possible, and employing a groundskeeper who has a heavy hand on the nozzle of the water hose. But it's hard to imagine the host nation could have come up with as appealing and traditional a site, so hats off to Colombia. The hosts are hardly out of it, but the U.S. clearly is in command of the tie now, thanks to that high-altitude flier, Mardy Fish.
Have a good weekend, everyone. I'll be around to jawbone with you about Davis Cup all the way.