Spain Retain Davis Cup

06 December 2009

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Spain has retained the Davis Cup after Feliciano Lopez and Fernando Verdasco won the doubles to give them an unassailable 3-0 lead.

Spain were in the driving set after Rafael Nadal and David Ferrer won both their singles rubbers in Friday’s matches, Ferrer coming back from a two set to love down for a sensational win against Radek Stepanek.

And despite that four hour marathon Stepanek was back on court for the doubles with Tomas Berdych in a bid to keep their Davis Cup dreams alive.

Spain broke early in the opening set but were soon pegged back to 3-3 by the Czech pair with both teams struggling to make inroads on their opponents serve the set went to a tie break.

The momentum swung between both teams as the tie break continued Stepanek and Berdych saved two set pints before failing to capitalise on one of their own.

Despite disappointment of not wrapping the set up earlier Lopez and Verdasco gave the home crowd something to cheer about as they eventually took the tie break 9-7, giving them the first set.

The next set was more of the same as they stayed locked together, both sides producing some great tennis along the way. But the Czechs threw away a 40-0 lead on their own serve to hand Spain the Break before Lopez served out the set to put them firmly in the driving seat.

It was all one way traffic after that as Lopez and Verdasco broke in the opening game of the third set to immediately give themselves the upper hand.

Stepanek and Berdych were unable to recover the break and the Davis Cup is staying in Spain, much to the delight of the home crowd.

Despite today’s matches being dead rubbers Rafael Nadal once again took to the court to face Jan Hajek, with the match reduced to the best of three.

And it was another great confidence boosting performance from the world number two as he put his troubles of recent weeks behind him to win in straight sets 6-3 6-4.

And it was to be a 5-0 white wash as David Ferrer notched up another win as he saw off Lukas Dlouhy 6-4 6-2 for an impressive weekend of tennis from the Spanish squad.

And Spain was the first Davis Cup winners to whitewash their final opponents since Sweden beat the USA 5-0 in 1997.

FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw

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