No Deciding 5th Rubber !

In this week Davis Cup matches none of the 4 had to be decided on a deciding match. Spain had finalized their win Saturday with the double while Roddick gave the win to the USA with a very easy straight set win over Mathieu of France in the first match. Nalbandian though had to fight to win his match 9-7 in the 5th set.

Davis Cup champions USA had no trouble to beat France this weekend winning all four singles matches and lost to a very good doubles team. It was Roddick's 9th straight Davis Cup win as he beat Mathieu 6-2 6-3 6-2 in 1h37. Roddick is still the only player this player to have beaten the World Top 3 players. He is now 29-9 on Davis Cup matches.

James Blake win over fellow Top 10 Richard Gasquet 6-7(4) 6-4 6-4 in 1h40 gave the last point to his country.

They will meet Spain next to try to reach their second Davis Cup final in a row. Spain won their match on Saturday, and the last two singles matches were kind of practice match as Verdasco beat Berrer and Kiefer beat Lopez to win at least one point in this match with no real contest from the German team.

Nikolai Davydenko from Russia replaced Igor Andreev in the first single match. He fought hard against Czech N°1 Tomas Berdych. Unfortunately, in the beginning of the 5th set Berdych slept and was forced to retire giving the match to Russia. Davydenko won 6-3 2-6 6-7 6-3 1-2 ret. in a marathon math of 3h40.

Czech Lukas Dlouhy beat Marat Safin 6-3 6-3 in over 1h to finalized Russia win 3-2.

It is the second time in a row now that Russia wins due to a retirement as Djokovic retired for Serbia last time, to Davydenko as well. Russia won their last 16 match at home; their last loss was to the USA in 1995 when Pete Sampras won 3 games.

Far away from Russia, in Buenos Aires there was another marathon encounter with World N°7 David Nalbandian and Robin Soderling. Nalbandian hit 69 clean winners and won 3 more points in total than his opponent to sealed the match and the victory for his country in 4h10, 6-4 1-6 4-6 6-4 9-7.

Nalbandian is now 15-3 in Davis Cup matches and 8-0 on clay, he might one of the favourite for the upcoming clay court season as he already won the title in Buenos Aires (d. Acasuso )and made the final in Acapulco (l. Almagro).

Juan Monaco won the fifth rubber 6-3 6-3 over T. Johansson to make it 4-1.

The Semi Final will take place the 19-21 of September and Spain will receive USA with the choice of surface, clay probably. And Russia will receive Argentine letting the away team choose the surface, probably clay as well.