Austria’s men still go into the encounter with the Scandinavians as outsiders.
Thanks to clear victories in Ireland (4:0) and against Turkey (3:0), Austria’s men’s national team has earned its next chance of participating in the Davis Cup Finals in 2024 after 2023. As of today, December 2nd, the next opponent in the fight for tickets for the lucrative final tournament in 2025 has been known: The team of ÖTV Davis Cup captain and sports director Jürgen Melzer will meet, as the draw in the ITF offices in London on Monday afternoon resulted in a home game against Finland in the first qualifying round from January 31st to February 2nd, 2025. The winner of the match advances to the second qualifying round, which will be played from September 12th to 14th, 2025 – from now on again in a new mode with home and away games. If this hurdle is also overcome, the place in the Davis Cup Final 8 is booked. Italy is the first nation to qualify for this, as the winner in 2024 will act as the organizer of the final tournament from 2025 to 2027, as the ITF also announced on Monday.
Austria as an underdog despite a clean slate
Austria has a clean slate in the international matches against Finland and has won all six previous comparisons, most recently on the 13th/14th. September 2019 was a very thin 3-2 when Dennis Novak kept his nerve in the all-important singles tiebreak of the third set. After playing away in Espoo, the ÖTV men have the home advantage this time. In the last five years, however, Finland has become an even more powerful nation and this year even reached the final tournament of the best 16. With Otto Virtanen (ATP rank 94) and Emil Ruusuvuori (ATP rank 95), there are currently two Finns in the top 100 in the world. Since Sebastian Ofner (ATP 88) will be out due to two heel operations, Austria can at best counteract this with Jurij Rodionov (ATP 176) and Lukas Neumayer (ATP 226). There is currently no other red-white-red representative in the top 300. In addition, Finland has the reigning Wimbledon doubles winner Harri Heliövaara (ATP doubles 16) in its ranks. If the Scandinavians arrive with their best line-up, Austria will be seen as an outsider.
Within the Austrian Tennis Association, the draw for the ÖTV men was received with relative satisfaction. “From a sporting point of view, this is a more solvable draw – definitely better than Argentina or Australia away from home, which would also have been possible,” said ÖTV Davis Cup captain and sports director Jürgen Melzer. “Nevertheless, Finland has two players, Ruusuvuori and Virtanen, who are ahead of our best, considering that Sebastian Ofner will unfortunately not be available to us due to injury. They also have an absolute world-class doubles player in Harri Heliövaara. Nevertheless, it’s an encounter that I’m looking forward to, as we don’t stand a chance with the audience behind us. However, we are far from being favorites. I will immediately start talking to our potential players about which surface they would most like to play on – then we will see where we will play the match.” An old acquaintance is definitely waiting for Melzer: “I’m looking forward to seeing you again with Jarkko Nieminen (Finland’s Davis Cup captain and record player, former world number 13; note)who is my year and with whom I am good friends.”
Ohneberg: “Challenging, but perhaps solvable task with home advantage”
ÖTV President Martin Ohneberg was also able to find positive things about Finland’s hurdle: “We are pleased that we can present ourselves to the home audience again in the new year. Finland is a challenging task, but perhaps solvable with home advantage.” ÖTV Managing Director for Economics Thomas Schweda also saw it similarly: “The omens are probably not that bad after we won against Finland the last time five years ago.” A huge one The challenge, however, will be the extremely short time to organize the international match: “Thanks to the very late draw, we have no time to waste and will start coordinating the planning of the game tomorrow morning. Since we only have eight weeks left until the international competition, there are not many options left in terms of the venue.”
Davis Cup, qualifying round (January 31 to February 2, 2025)
(1) Netherlands – bye
Sweden – (2) Australia
(3) Canada – Hungary
Israel – (4) Germany
Taiwan – (5) USA
Denmark – (6) Serbia
(7) Croatia – Slovakia
(8) France – Brazil
Switzerland – (9) Spain
(10) Czech Republic – South Korea
Japan – (11) Great Britain
Austria – (12) Finland
(13) Belgium – Chile
Norway – (14) Argentina
