{"id":69,"date":"2011-03-05T13:58:14","date_gmt":"2011-03-05T13:58:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/heavytopspin.com\/?p=69"},"modified":"2011-03-05T13:58:14","modified_gmt":"2011-03-05T13:58:14","slug":"saturday-topspin-pim-pim-and-somdev","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/2011\/03\/05\/saturday-topspin-pim-pim-and-somdev\/","title":{"rendered":"Saturday Topspin: Pim Pim and Somdev"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It wouldn&#8217;t be Davis Cup without the unexpected. \u00a0We got plenty of that yesterday:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Starting with the biggest shock: India is level with Serbia. \u00a0<strong>Somdev Devvarman<\/strong> took out <strong>Janko Tipsarevic<\/strong> in straight sets. \u00a0What might be an even bigger surprise, <strong>Rohan Bopanna<\/strong> took <strong>Viktor Troicki<\/strong> to five sets. \u00a0With Bopanna, you have to favor India in the doubles, and if Devvarman and Bopanna are playing this well, they&#8217;ve got a chance to grab a point in the reverse singles, as well. \u00a0Wow.<\/li>\n<li>I <a title=\"Tuesday Topspin: Davis Cup and\u00a0Dallas\" href=\"http:\/\/tennisabstract.com\/blog\/2011\/03\/01\/tuesday-topspin-davis-cup-and-dallas\/\">predicted<\/a> a Sweden win regardless, but a straight set win for <strong>Joachim Johansson<\/strong> over <strong>Teymuraz Gabashvili<\/strong>? \u00a0I don&#8217;t think anyone outside of Sweden saw that coming. \u00a0A 2-0 lead basically locks up the win for the Swedes.<\/li>\n<li>As I <a title=\"Thursday Topspin: Wins for\u00a018-year-olds\" href=\"http:\/\/tennisabstract.com\/blog\/2011\/03\/03\/thursday-topspin-wins-for-18-year-olds\/\">suggested<\/a> the other day, <strong>Jurgen Melzer<\/strong> isn&#8217;t exactly unassailable right now, and <strong>Jeremy Chardy<\/strong> proved it yesterday with a victory over the Austrian in straights. \u00a0The depth of French tennis is simply amazing&#8211;Chardy is the nation&#8217;s #6 player.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>For all of that, the best tennis on Friday may have taken place in Croatia. \u00a0Both singles matches went five sets, with <strong>Marin Cilic<\/strong> edging <strong>Florian Mayer<\/strong>, and <strong>Phillip Kohlschreiber<\/strong> squeaking past <strong>Ivan Dodig<\/strong>. \u00a0Today&#8217;s doubles rubber may well end up deciding the tie.<\/p>\n<p>A rung down the ladder, Canada is facing Mexico. \u00a0Even without <strong>Daniel Nestor<\/strong>, Canada is heavily favored. \u00a0I was very curious to see how <strong>Milos Raonic<\/strong> would handle the clay. \u00a0His opponent is outside the top 500, so maybe the result doesn&#8217;t mean much, but Raonic came through with ease, dropping only five games.<\/p>\n<p>The most intriguing matchup in Group 1 is Netherlands vs. Ukraine. \u00a0Neither squad would be out of place in the World Group; arguably, either one is better than Belgium and Chile, and perhaps even Russia. \u00a0The tie is even at one apiece, after <strong>Sergiy Stakhovsky<\/strong> defeated <strong>Robin Haase<\/strong> in five sets and <strong>Thiemo de Bakker<\/strong> beat <strong>Ilya Marchenko<\/strong> in straights.<\/p>\n<p><em>Back to Dallas: <\/em>The American challenger is a lot less exciting now; in the first two matches yesterday, <strong>Jack Sock<\/strong> and <strong>Ryan Harrison<\/strong> exited the tournament. \u00a0Sock was impressive for much of the first set, but <strong>Matthew Ebden<\/strong>&#8216;s speed and consistency was too much. \u00a0Still, it&#8217;s an exciting week for the youngster, and the quarterfinal showing should boost him more than 200 places in the rankings, up to the top 600.<\/p>\n<p><em>More results: <\/em><strong>Benjamin Mitchell<\/strong> advanced to the final in Australia F2, taking out top seed <strong>Vishnu Vardhan<\/strong>. \u00a0It&#8217;s the second final of his career, and he&#8217;ll be gunning for his first tournament win when he faces countryman <strong>Michael Look<\/strong>. \u00a0The two have faced each other before: in November, Mitchell won in three sets.<\/p>\n<p>HT.com favorites <strong>Grigor Dimitrov<\/strong> and <strong>Horacio Zeballos<\/strong> keep winning: Dimitrov is in the semis in Cherbourg, and Zeballos has reached the final in Salinas.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s one more name to keep an eye on: <strong>Takanyi Garanganga<\/strong> of Zimbabwe. \u00a0A former African junior champ, he&#8217;s 20 years old, and he&#8217;s in the semifinals of USA F6. \u00a0He&#8217;s reached the later rounds of a handful of futures tournaments, but this is his best result in the U.S. \u00a0He had to qualify, so he has strung together five wins this week. \u00a0Today, he&#8217;ll face his toughest opponent of the week in top-seeded Brit <strong>Daniel Cox<\/strong>, ranked 320th in the world<\/p>\n<p>I think it&#8217;s time to watch some doubles!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It wouldn&#8217;t be Davis Cup without the unexpected. \u00a0We got plenty of that yesterday: Starting with the biggest shock: India is level with Serbia. \u00a0Somdev Devvarman took out Janko Tipsarevic in straight sets. \u00a0What might be an even bigger surprise, Rohan Bopanna took Viktor Troicki to five sets. \u00a0With Bopanna, you have to favor India &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/2011\/03\/05\/saturday-topspin-pim-pim-and-somdev\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Saturday Topspin: Pim Pim and Somdev<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,24,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-challengers","category-daily-recaps","category-davis-cup"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}