Czech It Off

**

by Pete Bodo**

If you want to know how happy the happy the girls from the Czech Republic were after they won the Fed Cup in Moscow, check out the pictures over at the tournament website. You might think, Duh! . . . but it's always good to be reminded that sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words. If those snaps don't bring a smile to your face, you're sorely in need of a disposition transplant.

One of the best things about Fed Cup is that, just as in Davis Cup, doubles really matters. It isn't a separate event, as it is at conventional tournaments. It's not filler, or a warm-up act. It's not the desert at a banquet featuring a main course of singles, nor the monkey cage everyone visits even though they wouldn't even be at the zoo were it nor for the lions.

In our major international team competitions, doubles is as integral a part of the action as singles. And if there still are more singles (four) matches than doubles (one), the role of doubles can be critical, if not necessarily decisive. One of the most reliable markers for a successful Davis Cup team always has been a strong doubles squad. Few nations can field two singles players who can handle the No. 1 of any opposing nation, but many countries can put together a competitive doubles team, which means that a quality singles player and a good doubles squad can win a tie. In the past 10 Davis Cup finals, the winning team took the doubles point eight times.

In Fed Cup, the doubles can be even more important—although it can often be something doubles never is in Davis Cup, irrelevant. It just depends on the circumstances, because the doubles is the sudden-death decider when a tie is deadlocked at 2-2. Perhaps it would be more satisfying to have the fate of a tie come down to a singles clash, preferably between two No. 1 players. But Davis Cup honchos know that making the clash of No. 1s the fifth rubber in a best-of-five format will too often result in a meaningless fifth match—both when a tie is swept, 3-0, or a team wins 3-1.

The Fed Cup pooh-bahs, meanwhile, want to get a tie done in a regular (rather than three-day) weekend, and that demands the doubles be the last match, because tradition (and common sense) suggest that a player who is taking part in both needs to be at his or her freshest for singles. This approach has some real advantages. Should a team clinch before the doubles, the last match can be an entertaining wind-down—easy on the players as well as the spectators. And it avoids the major letdown fans might feel when a team clinches before the final match, when one or even two singles matches are meaningless dead rubbers.

This year, out of seven ties in Fed Cup World Group play, the doubles match played the decisive role three times. Losing Fed Cup finalist Russia barely got by France in the first round, with Svetlana Kuznetsova and Anastasia Pavyluchenkova coming up big to blitz Julie Coin and Alize Cornet, 7-6 (4), 6-0. Eventual champion Czech Republic also needed to win a doubles match to remain in contention before this weekend. Against Belgium in the semis, the Czech team of Iveta Benesova and Barbora Zahlavova Strycova subdued Kirsten Flipkens and Yanina Wickmayer in straight sets.

But the biggest doubles win of all, of course, was the one posted yesterday by first-time partners Lucie Hradecka and Kveta Peschke, who clinched the Cup for the Czechs with a resounding, 6-4, 6-2 beating of Elena Vesnina and Maria Kirilenko. It was the first time in five years that the doubles was required to decide the tie, and you can bet the women in play felt the kind of pressure that is usually reserved for singles players at late stages of a Grand Slam. From the outset, the Russians looked out of sync and disorganized, while the Czechs artfully melded young Hradecka's power and Peschke's veteran guile.

But as much credit as the doubles team deserves, let's not forget the player who got the Czechs into position to win the championship for the first time since 1988, before the break-up of the nation once known as Czechoslovakia. That was the best player on the WTA since the end of the U.S. Open, Petra Kvitova. Her singles win over wily veteran and two-time Grand Slam champion Kuznetsova—with the teams tied 1-1—gave the Czechs the breathing room they needed, given that Anastasia Pavyluchenkova, substituting for Maria Kirilenko, was a good bet to beat Lucie Safarova and force the sudden-death doubles.

That brings us to one of the more intriguing facets of this final tie. Did that savvy old Russian Fed and Davis Cup captain Shamil Tarpischev out-fox himself by pulling the old switcheroo—inserting Pavlyuchenkova in the singles (for the fourth rubber, vs. Lucie Safarova) and pairing Kirilenko with Vesnina in a first-time doubles partnership? Vesnina was a so-so career 4-3 in doubles with a variety of partners (including Kuznetsova), but Kirilenko was just 1-0. The Russians, clearly no doubles experts going in, had precious little time to gel as team.

On the other hand, with Russia on the brink of elimination, Pavyluchenkova was a better bet to keep the tie going after Kvitova's win over Kuznetsova in the third match, so it's probably a wash. If there was a lesson in all this, it may be that the Russians sorely missed having the services of multi-faceted but presently injured Vera Zvonareva.

But there was another intriguing takeaway, the declaration made by the conspicuously gifted Pavyluchenkova, who overpowered Safarova in the fourth match to keep the tie alive. She said, “It's all about motivation, because nowhere else can I motivate myself like I'm motivating here when playing Fed Cup. This is what I'm going to work on this season, because I'm just asking myself, why not play all my matches like I'm playing here in Fed Cup?”

Indeed. A ramped-up commitment by the world No. 16 could spell bad news for some of the icons of the WTA, for she may be on the verge of a breakout year in 2012, much like Kvitova enjoyed this year. The talent is there, no doubt about it. It's really a question of her desire, mental fitness, and maturity. At 5'10", Pavlyuchenkova is two inches shorter than her 21-year-old contemporary Kvitova, but she seems to move a bit more fluidly. Give Kvitova an edge in power, and an advantage in being left-handed, but Pavlyuchenkova gets the nod in technique.

It's too bad that Tarpischev's machinations prevented the women from meeting in the Fed Cup final, but I have a feeling we'll be seeing these two women squaring off plenty of times in the future.