Bettauer: Time for some magic!

The match that everyone has been waiting for in the World Group Davis Cup clash between Canada and France will feature Milos Raonic and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in a battle of the respective country’s number 1 players.  The Davis Cup format is set in such a way to ensure a battle between the two best singles players will occur on the first match up on Sunday, usually a tie clinching situation by then for one of the country’s thereby ensuring that the battle between the top players will have much added drama and emotion.  France now leads the tie 2 matches to 1 after their impressive doubles win with Michael Llodra and Julien Benneteau playing marvellously to neutralize the big power doubles game of Daniel Nestor and  Raonic 7-6, 7-6, 6-3.  Canada must now win both singles matches today to win the tie, a task that will be extremely difficult, but not impossible.  Davis Cup does produce magical, inspired performances, and Canada will need two of those from Raonic and Vasek Pospisil to defeat number 6 in the world Tsonga and Gael Monfils who is expected to be reinserted into the line-up for the final match and is ranked 13.

Canada’s doubles loss yesterday to France was disappointing given the insertion of Raonic to take advantage of his hot hand and monstrous serve to augment Nestor’s superb doubles skills.  Both underperformed to an extent and that margin was more than enough for the very sharp and determined French team who always seemed to be a step ahead in the match.  The much vaunted first serves of Nestor and Raonic struggled around 50% providing enough room for some outstanding returning by the French players, particularly Benneteau who played an outstanding rebound match after his loss to Raonic on Friday.  Raonic, as great a singles player as he is becoming, looked out of sorts in doubles, and it just reinforced that doubles is a quite a different game from singles with less time to set up, more precision placements and movement that is more up and down than side to side.

The Raonic/Tsonga match is a heavy weight bout and will provide Raonic with his biggest test to date in his young career, playing a top 6 player in a pressure, high profile match at home.  Their games match up well, with both featuring the best serves on the tour and both possessing lethal forehands.  Raonic is probably a little more powerful and Tsonga faster with his wonderful athleticism.  Tsonga’s hard backhand down the line may be the difference, but Raonic has displayed great calm and control in his singles matches and if “takes care of business” on his serve as he likes to say, he has every chance to win this match.

If it then comes down to Pospisil and Monfils, I believe that Pospisil will play a class better than on Friday when the occasion and his opponent may have been a little overwhelming.  He has had two days to digest the experience and work on the areas of his game he wants humming today.  He demonstrated last year against Israel that he can rise to the occasion and handle high pressure in a fifth and deciding match.  He will play a great competitor in Monfils but the expectation to win will be on Monfils’s shoulders and combined with a suspect knee could lead to opportunities that a determined Pospisil could jump on.  20 years ago to the same weekend in Vancouver a young Daniel Nestor stunned the world with a Davis Cup performance for the ages defeating Stefan Edberg.  If  the Canadian players believe and with a little Karma at play, we may see some magic today!

Robert Bettauer is the CEO for the Pacific Institute for Sport Excellence (PISE) and has an extensive history as a senior sports leader in Canada with previous roles as the founding President and CEO of the Canadian Sport Centre Ontario and the Director of Tennis Development for Tennis Canada.  As an athlete Robert won several national tennis titles and was a member of Canada’s Davis Cup Team while also holding an ATP Tour world ranking in singles and doubles for a number of years.  As a national coach Robert ran Tennis Canada’s first Western Canadian high performance training centre at UBC and helped coach the Davis Cup team leading to coaching Canada’s tennis team at the Olympic Games in Seoul and Barcelona.  Robert is the tennis analyst for Sportsnet and has provided television commentary and analysis on tennis for over 25 years at the Rogers Cup, Olympics and Davis Cup. Robert is also currently the Chair of the Canadian Tennis Hall of Fame and is still an active tennis player and coach. An on-going presenter on sport development topics he has a Masters in sport psychology and regularly provides mental training education on enhanced performance. The blog above can be found here.