This Tuesday starts the Final 8 of the Davis Cupwhich will be played until next Sunday in the José María Martín Carpena Sports Palace in Málaga. With the presence of the Argentine Tennis Team YPF and what the last tournament as a professional will mean in the Spaniard’s career Rafael Nadalthe teams are now ready to compete for the long-awaited Silver Salad Bowl.
The first to debut at the Costa del Sol venue will be the host Spain y Netherlands. The match will begin at 1:00 p.m. (Argentina time) and can be seen on the screen. DirecTV Sports 2being the only duel on the opening day.
Under the captaincy of David Ferrerthe Spanish team will have the tennis players Carlos Alcaraz, Rafael Nadal, Marcel Granollers, Roberto Bautista Agut and Pedro Martínez. Meanwhile, the Dutch team, led by Paul Haarhuiswill have in its ranks Tallon Greekpoor, Botic Van de Zandschulp, Jesper de Jong y Wesley Koolhof.
The history indicates that they have played eight series, with six victories for the Iberians and two for the oranges. The last victory was in the hands of the Spanish, in the quarterfinals of the World Group in 2004.
The team that achieves the victory will qualify for the semi-finals, which will be played next Friday the 22nd against the winner of the duel that will be played this Wednesday Canada y Germany at 8 (Argentina time). For Thursday, the match between USA y Australia at 6 (Argentina time), followed by Argentina against Italy at 1:00 p.m. (Argentina time).
The competition regulations provide that the first duel of each series will be between the second singles players of each delegation; Then it will be the turn of the best seeds from each team; and finally, the double players. All matches will be played in a best of three sets..
It should be noted that the maximum Davis Cup champion is USA (32 titles), followed by Australia (28), France y Great Britain (10), Sweden (7), Spain (6), Germany, Czech Republic y Russia (3), Italy (2), and Argentina, Croatia, Canada, Serbia, South Africa and Switzerland (1).
Mallorcan Nadal decided that the Final 8 of the Davis Cup will be his last tournament as a professional player. Rafa debuted in this type of competition in 2004 before the Czech Use Novakwas called up 20 times, played 23 series and holds an individual record of 29 games won and one lost. In addition, of the six Silver Salad Bowls that Spain has, the champion of 22 Grand Slam titles was able to win five of them.
In the press conference prior to Tuesday’s match against the Netherlands, Rafa said: “I know that I have done everything I could, My time has come and I have to accept it as suchwithout any type of drama to leave with the personal peace of mind of having always made that last effort that the situation required. Just as I have done it many other times and it has turned out well, A time has come that due to age, the accumulation of everything and the multifactorial injury I have to say up to this point.”.
Regarding his last participation with the Spanish Davis Cup team, the former world number one stated: “We are here to compete“Everything else does not have to distract us from what we came for, which is to try to give our best to achieve the best possible result.”
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