The Buzz-Kill

by Pete Bodo

Way to step up, Feli. He did a thoroughly professional and well-modulated job in a less-than-ideal scenario thrust upon him by David Ferrer, who not only offered inadequate resistance to David Nalbandian in the first match of this Davis Cup final, but also did a great deal to take the potentially crushing pressure off the heavily favored home team of Argentina. For after the way Nalbandian ripped through that first match, it became less a matter of the Argentines potentially choking than of whether the Spanish would be so dispirited by Nalbandian's brilliant opening statement that they would just shrug and go through the motions the rest of the way, rationalizing that in 2008 it was just not meant to be.

Now, thanks to Lopez, the Spanish can entertain serious hopes of actually winning this tie - which is how I felt things would play out as of yesterday, if Lopez had the sand to play a tight, focused, disciplined second singles match. Lopez didn't need to play lights-out tennis, either. The big Day One surprise for me was the disappointing performance of Juan Martin del Potro. We knew, months ago, that del Potro isn't exactly a fiery, inspiration-driven player. He's strong, he's powerful, and in many ways he's tough. But the one thing I didn't factor into my calculations is something that is more relevant in Davis Cup than regular tournament play - can this guy, any guy, really lift his game for Davis Cup, tapping into the deeply buried emotional reserves that the very best Davis Cup players know how to exploit?

Or, to borrow a phrase we heard quite a lot lately, has del Potro every heard the phrase, Drill, baby, drill! Oh, you might put down del Potro's relatively subdued performance to the pressure inherent in this tie, or really reach and speculate on his physical or emotional fitness (it has been a long year, and del Potro played a lot in the last six months). The former is a more charitable option; del Potro is, after all, a virtual Davis Cup rookie. But option no. 2 is in some ways a more tantalizing subject for speculation. One of the great virtues of the best players is the ability to find inspiration - sometimes in unusual veins - at the most critical of moments. And one of the shortcomings of good but never quite great performers is an inability to do so.

This line of thinking reminds me why, as of late as this summer, I felt a measure of antipathy toward del Potro's game. Even when he was in the midst of his hot summer run, I never sensed, watching him, that he was a man on a mission. I tended to see him as plodding, workmanlike, armed with great weapons and conspicuous gifts, but - perhaps - lacking. . . heart, or just that sense of enthusiasm and joy we like to see in a competitor. Perhaps he would be yet another big man to get the sucky job in the re-enactment of David and Goliath. A lot of small men have made a good living because they had the courage and faith to believe the old chestnut, The bigger they are, the harder they fall. . .

This is highly theoretical. It's going to take quite a few more matches, on a number of different stages, before we can draw comfortable conclusions about del Potro's nature as a competitor. Davis Cup duty is tough, and the less seasoned the player, the tougher it is. What we can say for certain today is that del Potro did not play a particularly inspired match on a day when he was in a relatively comfortable position (with Argentina up 1-0) and fate put the ball in his court: This can be yours - all you have to do is take it.

Beyond that, I didn't find the match particularly riveting, which brings us to another aspect of del Potro's game. Although I revised my opinion this fall (with a little goading from John McEnroe, who's pretty high on del Potro), I still felt that del Potro's game is a real buzz-kill.  He's the tennis version of one of those people who can walk into a social situation and suck the oxygen right out of the room, and before you know it you're looking at your watch and dying to go home. That isn't the worst quality for a tennis player, at least when it comes to the job of winning matches, but it doesn't exactly maximize the spectating experience. More to the point, it's a quality that goes hand-in-hand with the aforementioned inability to feel truly, deeply and organically inspired.

So Spain goes into the doubles tomorrow in pretty good shape, and all the pressure that Nalbandian seemed to dispatch in the first match surely will drift back into the arena in Mar del Plata and stay there for the next two days. The question of the moment, to my mind, is:  Will Argentina's captain Alberto Mancini really roll the dice and insert Nalbandian in the doubles tomorrow?

Have a great weekend, everyone. Rosangel will be providing CC posts tomorrow and Sunday, and I'll be dropping by from the farm in game-rich Andes, where we might be experiencing our first below-zero nights of the fall.