Russia take a comfortable 2-0 lead over Spain in the Fed Cup final

This weekend was the start of the Fed Cup final between Spain and Russia, played on red clay in Madrid, in what should have been one of the bigger events on the tennis calendar but it ended up being largely ignored.

Russia didn’t field their strongest team with Dinara Safina and Elena Dementieva opting to skip the tie, citing injuries, although both are expected to make an appearance a few days later in Tokyo. It is especially surprising that Dementieva, who thrives playing for her country, decided to not give herself another opportunity to lift the trophy. Regardless, Russia remained strong favourites with Svetlana Kuznetsova and Vera Zvonareva nominated as the two singles players. The Spanish team were the clear underdogs with their singles players consisting of surprise French Open quarter-finalist, Carla Suarez Navarro and Anabel Medina Garrigues.

Last night, I was trying to weigh the pros and cons of watching Fed Cup as opposed to watching the Bucharest semi-finals which were scheduled around the same time. That I am a huge fan of Davis Cup and the drama and atmosphere that surrounds it, raised a little bit of interest for me, and to see Carla Suarez Navarro who I find to be one of the most refreshing players on the WTA tour.

But on the other hand, the opening singles match between Anabel Medina Garrigues and Vera Zvonareva did not appeal to me at all. So I decided to watch the match in Bucharest between Jose Acasuso and Gilles Simon, a marathon of a match lasting almost three hours, which turned out to be a good decision then I switched over to Suarez Navarro and Kuznetsova afterwards.

Before writing about this article, I tried to find some thoughts on the Fed Cup matches that happened last night to back up my own, but I could not find one single comment of any of these matches (not its result) that was any longer than one sentence long, reflecting the complete lack of interest in this event, or maybe lack of television coverage.

The drama and atmosphere that I like to see in these team competitions was completely absent. The stadium has a capacity for 4000 spectators, and it is roughly around the same size as say Court 1 of Monte Carlo/Rome. The stands were only about a third full, giving the impression that this was like an early round match at a WTA event. Compare that to the upcoming Davis Cup tie between Spain and USA being played in the same city (Madrid), where it was reported that the players will be playing to a sold-out crowd of 21,000 people, although much of that is due to the appearance of Rafael Nadal. But regardless, every Davis Cup tie attracts significantly larger crowds than this.

Fed Cup doesn’t even come close to Davis Cup in terms of prestige and tradition, due to the frequent changes that had been made to its format over the years. It was only in 2004 when the Fed Cup started to adopt a similar format to the Davis Cup, where they started staging the ties in one of the competing countries, rather than at a neutral venue, and prior to 2002, there were only three rubbers in a tie as opposed to five. However, it still has its minor differences in that the doubles is the final rubber and that there is one less round and therefore half the number of countries in the World Group, and this is what allows them to play out the entire competition this early in the season. Since they have made these changes, Fed Cup has been better for it, although it still suffers from many of the top players not playing, usually picking and choosing depending on the circumstances of each particular tie. It looks like there is not much that can be done about it, with part of the problem being that the women play a more limited schedule and need to take care of their bodies more often, and the other being the lack of prestige which simply can’t be built up over a short period of time.

Back onto the tie itself, the match that I did watch between Suarez Navarro and Kuznetsova was disappointing. Suarez Navarro who impressed me so much earlier this year the French Open (especially her match against Flavia Pennetta), never seemed to be able to find the range on her groundstrokes and the match ended up to be a comfortable win for Kuznetsova in what was a relatively scrappy affair to say the least.

Suarez Navarro hits with a fair amount of topspin on her groundstrokes and her game is smooth and effortless. She plays what I would consider to be a stylish claycourt game, in the same vein of someone like Filippo Volandri on the men’s side, except not as stylish as Volandri. I find Suarez Navarro to be one of the most refreshing players on the women’s tour because she doesn’t possess that flat high-risk game that most of the WTA players seem to have these days. Kuznetsova, Mauresmo and Schnyder are the only others I can think of. Her trademark shot is the one-handed backhand, which reminds me of Alex Corretja’s backhand from a technical point of view, although she has the variety to either hit it with top spin or slice. She plays further behind the baseline than most of the top female players, to give herself more time to set up given her slightly longer backswings. When playing well and when given enough time to do so, Suarez Navarro has the ability to play a controlled aggressive game, using the full width of the court to move her opponents out of position to set herself up for the winner.

Unfortunately in this particular match, Suarez Navarro was unable to showcase any of that, as she found herself too often not being able to handle the heaviness and penetration of the Kuznetsova groundstrokes, especially on Kuznetsova’s forehand. Kuznetsova’s performance was inconsistent herself, but on most occasions, one or two penetrating shots from the Russian were enough to win her points. After the match, Kuznetsova said that, “The key to the match was not to beat myself. I started to rush and try to play too well and she came back but then I started to take my time again and got back on top.”

So Russia ended the day with a 2-0 lead as expected, where Vera Zvonareva had defeated Anabel Medina Garrigues earlier in the day 6-3 6-4.