Lion's Share

Whatever you might want to say about the tennis season, you can’t say it doesn’t go out with a bang—or a tear, or a song, or a dance, or a shaved head, or a torn shirt with something that looks like a lion on it. The Davis Cup final delivered, as it always does, an orgy of hysterical emotion on Sunday when the Czech Republic—i.e., Tomas Berdych and Radek Stepanek—won its first title since 1980, when it was still part of Czechoslovakia.

It was a long, kazoo-filled weekend, with more than a few twists and subplots. It’s always amazing how something so simple and straightforward—two teams, three days, four singles matches, one doubles match, three-out-of-five sets all the way—can create so much drama and surprise. Maybe the Davis Cup's creators were onto something. Here are six ways of understanding what just happened in Prague.

As a reason never to become a Davis Cup captain

Patrick McEnroe liked to say that his job as the head of the U.S. team was to make sure the court surface was exactly what his players wanted for each home tie, and...well, that was about it. Otherwise, he joked, he opened the ball cans and tossed the them to the guys to start practice.

After this weekend, Spanish captain Alex Corretja knows there’s a little more to it than that. He chose Nicolas Almagro to play the second singles, and he paid for it. While Almagro was the second-ranked player on the team, and had been a starter all year, the move came as a surprise to veteran Davis Cupper Feliciano Lopez. Feli, who had beaten Berdych in two of his last three matches, thought his big-serving, forward-moving game was better-suited to the fast hard court the Czechs had laid down.

In hindsight, Corretja made the wrong decision. Almagro played inspired tennis to take Berdych to five sets the first day, but he didn’t rise to the occasion against Stepanek, a player ranked nearly 30 spots below him, in the deciding rubber. As Corretja said afterward, we’ll never know how Lopez would have done, and his 2-8 lifetime record against Stepanek wouldn't give any captain confidence. But Lopez would have been able to use the fast court to his advantage more than the baseline-hugging Almagro, whose lack of a transition game hurt him against Stepanek.

Lopez has come up big in Davis Cup road matches before. In 2011, he beat Mardy Fish in five sets to give Spain a crucial opening point in their quarterfinal win over the Americans. In 2008 he upset Juan Martin del Potro in the final in Argentina to turn the tide in his team’s favor.

As proof that Tomas Berdych kinda had a point after all

Sticking with the Almagro situation for a minute, before the final Berdych said this about him: that he was Spain's “weak link,” and that the Czechs would “build their victory around him.”

Was Almagro the weak link? He was certainly weaker than his fellow singles player, David Ferrer, but he shouldn't take all of the blame. Spain would have won 3-1 if its doubles team, Marc Lopez and Marcel Granollers, had continued their winning form from last week’s World Tour Finals. The surface hurt their backcourt style, but they also finished the year 0-3 in Davis Cup. Spain has always relied on its singles players, but it can’t win forever without getting a point from its doubles team now and then.

Still, the Big Bad Berd was correct in his prediction that the Czechs would build their win around Almagro. In a way, he was paying a compliment, in a Berdychian way, to Ferrer. He knew they wouldn’t build much against him.

Which leads me to my next way of understanding this tie...

As yet another stage in David Ferrer’s late-career maturation

The Czechs mostly got what they wanted from the court they put down in Prague. It hurt Spain’s doubles team, and the net-rushing Stepanek used it more effectively in the fifth rubber than Almagro. But the biggest and most surprising beneficiary of the surface was Spain’s No. 1, Ferrer. He took the opportunity to let loose with his ground strokes, and focus the energy he usually uses for grinding defense on attacking instead. Ferru moved faster than usual between points, and hit out with more confident abandon. He even dictated the rallies against Berdych. For any other country, he would be a true No. 1 and team anchor.

Because Novak Djokovic used his 2010 Davis Cup performance as a springboard to bigger things, we’re going to wonder each year whether someone can do it again. On Friday and Saturday, it appeared that Berdych was the likely candidate for 2013 break through. Until Ferrer shredded him in straights on Sunday, that is. So now we ask: Can Ferru use this weekend to boost his confidence at the majors going forward?

On the one hand, in beating Berdych and Stepanek, he didn’t do anything he hasn’t done before. And his team didn’t win, either. But if he can continue to play in the manner he did in Prague—with more depth, pace, and aggression—he can beat anyone. Ferrer looked like a member of the game’s elite this weekend.

And yet...

As evidence that Rafael Nadal is a pretty valuable part of the Armada

Ferrer is great in Davis Cup, but Nadal, at 20-1 for his career, is even better. He gets knocked for picking and choosing his ties, and for typically picking the ones played at home, on clay. And it’s true, he’s more of a closer than a regular, day-to-day member of Spain’s dynasty—they’ve won plenty of ties without him. At the same time, though, Rafa has won matches in three of the country’s last four final-round wins. And if he had been in Prague at full strength, Spain almost certainly would have won this one. He’s 13-3 against Berdych and 6-0 against Stepanek lifetime. And while he’s 0-1 against Lukas Rosol, I have my doubts that coach Jaroslav Navratil would have brought Rosol off the bench. If he had, I also have my doubts that Rosol could have made hell freeze over a second time in 2012.

As one more reason to give the Davis Cup champions a bye the following year—or at least enough time to get sober before they have to defend their title

On February 1, the Czech Republic will travel to Switzerland to play their first tie of the 2013 DC season. Perhaps Roger Federer will take heart from the Czechs’ win and believe that a two-man team—in his case, he and Stan Wawrinka—really can win the whole thing. But it’s unlikely he’ll play. It’s also possible that Stepanek or Berdych or both won’t play; they would be justified in taking a break after their years of service. Whoever shows up, the Czechs could easily lose. Shouldn’t, after 32 years, they have a chance to reign as Davis Cup champions for more than 10 weeks?

As one more reason to love Davis Cup

The DC final is like baseball’s World Series: The big hit, or the big win, is just as likely to be provided by the journeyman as it is the superstar. In 2010, Victor Troicki clinched the final for Serbia; in 2011, Nadal did it for Spain; this year the task fell to the 37th-ranked, 33-year-old Stepanek, who, with little warning or time to prepare, got to play one of the most important matches of the year and celebrate the highlight of his career.

It’s the unpredictably democratic nature of Davis Cup that makes it special, and unique for tennis. For most of the weekend, the chatter was about whether Berdych had enough left to win three matches in three days; after the doubles, no one asked Stepanek whether he was tired or not. But by the second match on Sunday, Berdych was sitting on the sidelines, and it was all up to his teammate to come through.

The ATP season ended at one 02 Arena, in London, with Federer and Djokovic, two stars of the sport with 22 Grand Slam titles between them, playing for millions in the final. The Davis Cup season ended with Stepanek and Almagro, neither of whom is likely ever to play for a Slam, trying to overcome their nerves and flaws against each other, with a national title on the line.

The ATP’s year wrapped up in the glamorous, darkened 02 Arena in London. The Davis Cup wrapped up at another 02 Arena in Prague, like this:

With Nicole Vaidisova, Stepanek’s wife, looking she was about pass out on the sidelines. With a 33-year-old leaping the net, twice. With the Czech team jumping in a circle, then jumping in a long line, then jumping in a circle again, then jumping in an even longer line. With Berdych and Stepanek singing, crying, slow dancing, and pretending that the Cup was too hot to touch. With Berdych, who had begun the season by refusing to shake Nicolas Almagro’s hand, reminding Stepanek, who was flying around the court and had forgotten all protocol, to...shake Nicolas Almagro’s hand.

Davis Cup will make you do strange things. Sometimes it will make you do better things.