The U.S. teams Davis Cup title defense came to a premature end when they were defeated in the semi-finals by the spanish team spear-headed by Nadal and Ferrer. Nadal beat Querrey and Roddick, and Ferrer defeated Roddick to give Spain the 3 points needed to advance. Perhaps the turning point of the match was when Roddick lost heartbreaker to Ferrer in 5 sets. Had he won that point, the U.S. would’ve had a legitimate chance to advance, but that loss coupled with Nadal’s win over Roddick (6-4, 6-0, 6-4) made the last match between Querrey and Ferrer a dead rubber.

Russian and Argentina are locked in battle with Argentina leading 2-1 on the scoreboard.

Davis Cup got underway today, and as expected the home teams held serve. Spain dismantled U.S.A’s finest as Nadal and Ferrer beat Querrey and Roddick to take a commanding 2-0. With Nadal having one more match to play, this tie is as good as done.

Russia didn’t put up much of a fight against Argentine as Nalbandian grinded down Andreev, and Davydenko self-destructed against Del Potro. I don’t see anyway out of this one for the Russia, but unlike the U.S., these guys have a chance.

Tomorrow is the doubles day. Will these ties finish up tomorrow or will we see some live matches on Sunday?

In the wake of the news that Bob Bryan had to pull out of the Davis Cup tie with Spain, Patrick McEnroe put a brave face on as he claimed that he believed the U.S. had a legitimate chance of upsetting Spain if they managed to win a point on the very first day against Rafa and Ferrer.

I don’t think it’s impossible. It’s definitely not impossible. We feel we have a chance. As I said, we’re the underdog, but we’re certainly not here strictly for our health. We’re here because we think we can win.
Saying that, we’ve been in tough situations before, in Seville in the final, 2004. It was a great team. Rafa was just coming up then. Moya was playing well. Ferrero. They had many great players. We went over there, we fought extremely hard. Andy played a great match against Rafa on the first day. He had a chance to go up two sets to one in that match.
I feel like if we can be in that kind of situation on the first day, we have a chance to win a match, anything can happen. So obviously it’s difficult, but we played a lot of away ties, particularly these guys here played in a lot of away ties. We’ve got that experience of sort of expecting the crowd to be loud, expecting lots of things to happen.
We’ll just try to go out there and play our best.

I do believe that they have a chance to win a match or maybe too (a dead rubber), but I doubt U.S. has a legitimate chance of beating Rafa or getting more than a match from the other 2 singles matches. But stranger things have happened in the past. Right now it looks 4-1 for Spain.

If you told me before the U.S.-Austria tie, which was being played on some of the worst clay courts that I have ever seen, that U.S. will be this close to a sweep after the second day, I would think you were crazy. But after 2 days on clay, the U.S. team is now leading 3-0. For Roddick and Blake to win matches on clay is a very good sign for the U.S. as they try to repeat as Davis Cup champions. But the next round won’t be on clay. It will be on the U.S. hard courts. And the French team will be an absolute beast of a challenge for the U.S. with Australian Open Finalist Tsonga and Gasquet. The French have a heck of a doubles team too, so I think the next round will be possibly the hardest for the U.S. and will depend on Bryan Brothers more so than before. But this all depends on the top two Frenchmen playing.