Frankie, the Potato, and the Glorious Kazakhs

I could talk about the tennis going on in Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok and Beijing and whatnot...

...or I could talk about my favourite tournament of the year, and how awesome it's going to be next year.

That's right. More teams have been announced for the Hopman Cup!

Lleyton Hewitt's partner has been announced - it's Alicia Molik. This isn't exactly awe-inspiring stuff - when Australia managed to pull Stosur last year, that was a bit more of a coup - but Molik is likeable enough, so it should be fun. There's no way Australia's getting to the final, of course, but meh, whatevs. It's all about the exciting international teams anyways.

Speaking of which - Italy! yay! We have Potito 'I have an awesome name that only Jack Sock can rival' Starace paired up with Francesca Schiavone - man, is the women's draw going to be awesome at Hopman '11 or what? We have Serena, Juju, Frankie... pure awesomeness. The Italian team has the possibility of doing what Spain did this year, I think - a relatively underwhelming team on the surface that can totally kill the flashy teams with the big names. I would not be at all surprised to see Frankie and the Potato win the thing. It would be awesome.

But you know who I want to win? Kazakhstan.

That's right - Slava Shvedova and my beloved cutie-patootie Andrey Golubev are back for another year, and some arses are going to be kicked. They very-nearly-almost made the final this year - can they go all the way this time? I wouldn't be ruling them out... as Switzerland can well tell you, you can never count Kazakhstan out...

Heroes and Heroines

Okay, Rafael Nadal. He's not real, yeah?

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Five consecutive Monte Carlo titles. Now five consecutive Barcelona titles. All signs are pointing to five consecutive Roland Garros titles. He isn't real. He can't be real. He's a machine.

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It's going to be interesting to see how he goes at Rome this week - he's played pretty much every day for the last two weeks. Last year, he went out in the opening round to Juan Carlos Ferrero, but he was covered in blisters and could barely move. This year... I can't remember exactly who it is, but he's not facing anyone of the calibre of Ferrero in the opening round. How far can Rafa take this ride? I, for one, don't see anyone beating him soon.

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But I have been wrong before - I certainly did not see Italy beating Russia in the semis of the Fed Cup! To some extent, Russia was the victim of Shamil Tarpischev - personally, I think he could have made some better choices in who to deploy when (seriously - Chakvetadze over Petrova? WTF?) but all credit to the Italian girls, who did fabulously. Francesca Schiavone in particular is the heroine - she had that great win over Svetlana Kuznetsova on Day One, and then fought hard to take out Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova (who did fight gamely).

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It's going to be an interesting final - I certainly wouldn't have picked Italy/USA! Full credit to the American girls as well, because the Czech Republic is a powerhouse in women's tennis, with Benesova, Kvitova and Safarova on their team. The word here has to go out to Alexa Glatch, who was absolutely exceptional - I'll be interested to see more of her in the future!

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And Australia, down in the World Group II playoff, had a great win over Switzerland - with Stosur and Dokic on our side, I think we have a pretty sweet chance in the future! If Pennetta and Schiavone can do it, and Glatch and Mattek-Sands... why not Sam and Jelena?

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Today's Results

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Barcelona Open Banco Sabadell (Barcelona)

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Rafael Nadal def. David Ferrer, 6-2 7-5

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Fed Cup

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Italy 4, Russia 1

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Svetlana Kuznetsova def. Flavia Pennetta, 6-0 6-3

Francesca Schiavone def. Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, 7-6 (9-7) 4-6 6-2

Errani/Vinci def. Petrova/Pavlyuchenkova, 1-6 6-3 6-4

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USA 3, Czech Republic 2

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Lucie Safarova def. Bethanie Mattek-Sands, 6-3 6-1

Alexa Glatch def. Petra Kvitova, 6-2 6-1

Mattek-Sands/Huber def. Peschke/Benesova, 2-6 7-6 (7-2) 6-1

The Real Loser

All Spanish final in Barcelona. Big surprise. I bet the organisers are happy. Yay Rafa, yay Ferru.

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Okay, enough of that. Now - Fed Cup!

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Well, well, well, Italy. Talk about the little Fed Cup team that could. I would never, ever have picked this one - though I believe Van, of Tennis Talk, Anyone? and VANtage Point fame did, so kudos to him! One upset match is something, but to take a 2-0 lead over a country that is undoubtedly the powerhouse of women's tennis? That is something else.

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To be fair, Russia doesn't have its top, top players - neither Safina nor Dementieva are on the squad - but I don't know what Shamil Tarpischev was thinking, playing Chakvetadze instead of Petrova or even Pavlyuchenkova, who both are on the team and have both played better than Anna has this year. It'll be interesting to see the new moves Russia pulls out today, because you'd want to hope they'd fight back with a vengeance.

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Australia's doing well in Fed Cup too - we're up 2-0 in our tie against Switzerland - but that isn't the real tennis news here right now. Tennis Australia has announced that the Australian Davis Cup team will not go to Chennai to play our tie, due to security concerns - which, given the current Indian political climate, is fair enough. TA has petitioned the ITF to get the tie moved, but this was rejected, which means that Australia forfeits the tie.

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Naturally, there is some anger - both Geoff Pollard (CEO of Tennis Australia) and John Fitzgerald (the team captain) have spoken out against the ITF's decision. I can't say I know enough about the particular circumstances to make a real comment - I studied Indian politics at university, but that about three years back now - but the appeal for the move is not without precedent: the IPL (the cricket league, for those of you unfamiliar) has moved to South Africa because of unrest in India. This was ruled irrelevant in the Davis Cup case, much to the ire of the aforementioned Pollard and Fitzgerald.

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Whether or not the tie should be moved or the team should go or whatever, you have to feel for the players here. After that nailbiter over Thailand, they really deserved the opportunity to play this tie. I love following the Davis Cup team, even though the likelihood we'll win anytime in the near future is minute. Fitzgerald said the following:

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"We have worked so hard to get back in to World Group contention, to have it snatched away like this is gut wrenching."

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Could not agree more. Whatever the political situation, the real loser here is sport.

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Today's Results

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Barcelona Open Banco Sabadell (Barcelona)

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Rafael Nadal def. Nikolay Davydenko, 6-3 6-2

David Ferrer def. Fernando Gonzalez, 2-6 6-2 7-6 (7-5)

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Fed Cup

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Italy 2, Russia 0

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Flavia Pennetta def. Anna Chakvetadze, 6-4 6-0

Francesca Schiavone def. Svetlana Kuznetsova, 1-6 6-2 6-3

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USA 1, Czech Republic 1

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Petra Kvitova def. Bethanie Mattek-Sands, 6-3 7-6 (7-2)

Alexa Glatch def. Iveta Benesova, 6-1 6-2

Potato

Some players just fly under the radar. You know their names, you know they float around in the top hundred, and usually you know where they come from, but you wouldn't know them if you fell over them in the street and you couldn't name their significant career wins if someone paid you. On the whole, they have never been very deep at Slams - maybe an occasional round of sixteen, but rarely more than that. They do well in the IS and ISG tournaments, but are not particularly remarkable.

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One day, I am going to find out what makes these unremarkable players remarkable. Because they must be remarkable. You don't get to be in the top one hundred in the world without being a little bit remarkable. Let's name names. Potito Starace. Fabio Fognini. Jurgen Melzer. These guys have all been round for a while, but I could tell you next to nothing about them, except that Starace and Fognini are Italian and Melzer is Austrian. Oh, and Starace's name sounds like 'potato.' But that hardly takes rocket science to work out.

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Let's take Starace. He is 27. I know that. He comes from Cervinara. He plays right handed. And that's it. That is the extent of my knowledge.

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But there are other players, ranked in the same sort of area, that I know loads more about. Take Tommy Haas. Actually, he might be a bad example, because he's been up there in the top ten. According to the ATP website, Starace has never been higher than #27. Let's look at Robin Soderling, then. He's ranked #48, with a career high of #23. He plays right handed and lives in Monte Carlo.

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But I can also tell you that Soderling hates Nadal, and that it's apparently reciprocated. Soderling is considered a danger man on tour. He's quite good on grass. He's Swedish, and sometimes plays doubles with Jonas Bjorkman. Not many facts, sure, but some.

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Why do I know about Soderling? Because he's played a big match at a Slam. And I'm not just talking about a match against a big player, because Starace has played his share of those. I remember coming up against Rafa a couple of times, and losing pretty dismally. Soderling, however, was one half of that marathon five day match at Wimbledon last year, where his dislike of Rafa was fomented. And those are the things that make you remember people.

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So what can Potito do, if he wants people to remember him? He already has the advantage of a memorable, vegetablesque name. Actually, I wonder how famous he is in Italy? Is he a Hewitt or a Guccione? Or a Sirianni? There are quite a few good tennis players from Italy - there's equally forgettable Fognini and Bolelli and Seppi and Volandri. (I just went on the ATP website to see if there were any famous Italians I'd missed, and I was stunned to discover that Filippo Volandri is now ranked #138 in the world. When did that happen? He was about #30 last time I checked. What happened?) I wonder what kind of profile tennis has in Italy. How famous are these boys? And it's not like they're totally deficient in the women's draws, either - Flavia Pennetta springs inexorably to mind.

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But I'm talking about Potito's international recognition, not homegrown Italian fame. And not even household name status - just within the tennis community. (Look at me talking like I am one of the tennis community... Potito's probably done loads of wacky things that people talk about.) If you look at the press conference archive on ASAP sports, there is not one single conference from Starace. Not one.

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So if Starace wants to be famous, he has to either:

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- do well at a Slam.

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- do something stupid to get himself in the tennis news.

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- play a really, really long match at a Slam sometime.

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I don't know. Hell, why am I even writing about this? I know nothing about Starace - including whether or not he wants to be famous. Maybe he's content flying under the radar. But we'll never find out unless he does something remarkable.

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Today's Results

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Austrian Open (Kitzbuhel)

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Jurgen Melzer def. Rainer Schuettler, 2-6 7-5 7-5

Potito Starace def. Eduardo Schwank, 6-1 6-2

Juan Martin Del Potro def. Nicolas Devilder, 6-2 6-3

Victor Hanescu def. Brian Dabul, 6-3 6-4

Rainer Schuettler def. Jan Hernych, 2-6 6-4 7-5

Juan Martin Del Potro def. Sergio Roitman, 6-2 6-4

Nicolas Devilder def. Alexander Peya, 6-4 6-4

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Dutch Open Tennis (Amersfoort)

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Marc Gicquel def. Teimuraz Gabashvili, 6-4 6-1

Steve Darcis def. Christophe Rochus, 7-5 6-3

Albert Montanes def. Jose Acasuso, 6-0 6-2

Oscar Hernandez def. Marcel Granollers, 7-5 6-2

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Studena Croatia Open (Umag)

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Fernando Verdasco def. Mischa Zverev, 7-5 7-5

Fabio Fognini def. Carlos Moya, 6-4 6-3

Igor Andreev def. Guillermo Canas, 7-5 6-4

Maximo Gonzalez def. Roko Karanusic, 2-6 6-3 7-6 (7-4)

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Indianapolis Tennis Championships (Indianapolis)

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James Blake def. Woong-Sun Jun, 6-3 7-5

Sam Querrey def. Vince Spadea, 4-6 6-3 6-4

Gilles Simon def. Tommy Haas, 4-6 6-4 6-2

Sam Querrey def. Bobby Reynolds, 6-1 3-6 6-3

James Blake def. Yen-Hsun Lu, 6-2 6-0

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Bank of the West Classic (Stanford)

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Samantha Stosur def. Vera Zvonareva, 6-3 6-2

Patty Schnyder def. Alisa Kleybanova, 7-6 (10-8) 6-4

Marion Bartoli def. Anne Keothavong, 6-3 1-6 7-5

Aleksandra Wozniak def. Sybille Bammer, 6-4 7-5

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Gastein Ladies (Bad Gastein)

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Agnes Szavay def. Melanie Klaffner, 3-6 7-6 (10-8) 7-6 (7-3)

Mariya Koryttseva def. Caroline Wozniacki, 6-4 4-6 7-6 (7-5)

Pauline Parmentier def. Anna-Lena Groenefeld, 7-5 4-6 6-4

Lucie Hradecka def. Timea Bacsinszky, 6-1 6-4

Iveta Benesova def. Galina Voskoboeva, 6-4 4-6 6-1

Yvonne Meusburger def. Maret Ani 6-2 2-6 6-3

Tereza Hladikova def. Karolina Sprem, 6-3 1-6 6-4

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And in the last installment of Stars of the Past, Stars of the Future (for now!): Ernests Gulbis.

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Ernests Gulbis is the potential #1 that the world never saw coming. Like Jeremy Chardy, he exploded on the scene at Roland Garros 2008, but he's been making inroads for a lot longer than that. He attended the same tennis academy as world number #3 Novak Djokovic, the academy run by Niki Pilic. Djokovic graduated and went on to great things, as we have all seen - but it was for Ernests Gulbis that Pilic actually left the academy for a time so he could focus on one-on-one training. This teenager from Latvia has got a very special talent - perhaps one seen only once in a generation. Roger Federer turned out to be the king of his generation, the New Balls generation. Could Gulbis be the king of his?

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It seems a little pre-emptive to make this claim - and one feels that there is a man by the name of Rafael Nadal that might have something to say about that. But Ernests Gulbis has clearly got something going on. And it does seem unfair to put him in the same generation as Nadal or even his old friend Djokovic. Age is not necessarily the correct demarcation of generation. Gulbis belongs to the generation of Chardy, Cilic and Schwank - and of the four, it seems likely that he will turn out to be the best.

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Gulbis was the only man apart from Roger Federer to take a set from Nadal at Wimbledon this year. Despite the massively powerful groundstrokes of Nadal, Gulbis proved himself capable of dominating at the baseline. He is tall and thin and there seems to be little of him, but he is deceptively strong. He does not play the tennis of Fabrice Santoro, but he clearly has a very high tennis IQ. It seems only a matter of time before Gulbis breaks through with a big tournament win - and after that, who knows? The sky may well be the limit for Ernests Gulbis.