My favorite part of a Davis Cup tie is the doubles match on Saturday. No, this is not because of Horia at all… This time it was because our team was made of Horia and Florin, one of the best teams Romania ever had, junior champions in Wimbledon, and pretty good players in the ATP doubles tour ( Horia is a mixed doubles Grand Slam champion, 3 times Wimbledon finalist and Florin is a semifinalist in Roland Garros). But my interest in doubles came in a time when Horia was the only Romanian tennis player winning tournaments and bringing back the crowd to the ATP event held in Bucharest.

Mergea/Tecau vs Ardvisson/Brunstrom

I made sure I get to the tennis arena on time in order to see the team presentations. We cheered for our guests, we seemed happy to have them here. At least I was. My biggest regret was not being able to see the team Brunstrom/Lindstedt in action, that would have offered a high class tennis match. However the match today showed some very good quality tennis. The Swedish team (Isak Ardvisson/Johan Brunstrom) managed to break service at the beginning of the first two sets but our boys (Florin Mergea/Horia Tecau) managed to fight back. It took a while for Horia to get into the match and in the first set his first service betrayed him a bit. This can be very scary for a supporter but there is not much you can do, just cheep cheering. The other half of our team had a better start with a bit of a downfall at a certain point in the second set when Horia was very much into the match already. Our boys truly worked as a team, it was amazing how they kept running from one part of the court to the other and covered everything up. It is so clear that they have a lot of experience in playing together, their communication is sometimes flawless. I think they should team up in the ATP tournaments as well, they would be a very strong team.

Mergea/Tecau vs Ardvisson/Brunstrom

On the other side of the net I enjoyed watching Johan Brunstrom. His experience as a doubles specialist is obvious, he is a strong server and managed some subtle hits that you only see in doubles matches. Isak is the kind of player that intensely lives every point and jumps up and down hoping that his shot will be inside. It doesn’t always help but that was sweet.

On the whole the Swedes were betrayed by their service, if we were to judge by the fact that they lost two tie breaks where every service is very precious. They were also probably brought down by the more numerous and loud Romanian crowd. I hope we weren’t too rude, loud we were, that is for sure. At a certain point the leader of the supporters was the team captain Andrei Pavel. We like him a lot. Florin Mergea was probably the best player on the court today. The match itself was very tight with two first sets that were very long and could have been taken by any team. The third set was dominated by our boys and the doubles point went to Romania: 7-6 (2), 7-6 (5), 6-3.

Team presentations & retirement ceremony

As a bonus, not related to the tie though, the opening ceremony of today’s match was marked by Victor Hanescu’s retirement ceremony from the Davis Cup team. He was awarded by the ITF and FRT. We are going to miss him, the 13 years spent as a part of the team were amazing. I saw him live for the first time in 2003 in our match against France. Thank you Victor!