Russian final day jinx strikes again against France

Russian final day jinx strikes again against France

Russia completed a stunning comeback against France on Sunday to reach the Davis Cup by BNP Paribas semifinals after Igor Andreev defeated Paul-Henri Mathieu 60 62 61 in the decisive fifth rubber.Very seldom does a team come back from 1-2 down to win both final day's singles, but Russia did it for the second time in four years against France, repeating their success from the 2002 Davis Cup final with two emphatic final day wins.First Nikolay Davydenko beat Richard Gasquet 62 46 62 61 to level the tie, and then in a remarkably one-sided fifth rubber, Andreev trounced the luckless Mathieu to send Russia into an away semifinal against Croatia.That score takes some explaining! For the first eight games the decision by Russia's captain Shamil Tarpischev to play Andreev instead of Mikhail Youzhny was unquestionably correct, as all eight went to Andreev. He was as much on fire as Davydenko was in the first of the day's matches, going for the lines and hitting them with intense regularity, hardly recognisable from the figure who played so tentatively against Richard Gasquet on Friday.But the fact that the first set took 37 minutes for 60 showed that Mathieu wasn't as far out of it as the score suggested. He was serving poorly, and was being punished for playing a good three metres behind his baseline. But the difference between the two players was sufficiently slight that once Andreev's level dropped, Mathieu would have his chance. "That's what I kept telling him," said France's captain Guy Forget, "we knew Andreev couldn't keep that level up for ever."Mathieu broke at 0-2 in the second set to register his first game, but was then unable to hold serve. By the time he did, he was a set and 4-1 down, but by then Andreev was at least making a few mistakes. The match seemed ready to be competitive, but several turning points passed without the match turning. Andreev led 2-0 in the third set, and Mathieu again broke having been 40-15 down. But again he failed to hold serve, as Andreev kept up a solid level of play and Mathieu seemed remarkably unimaginative and horrendously error-prone. There were plenty of chances for the Frenchman, but he didn't win another game, and Andreev finished the job with an ace as the clock showed two hours.Earlier Davydenko had signalled his intention from the first point. He led Gasquet 62 42, with the 19-year-old Frenchman seeming immobile - it looked like nerves but he later said it was tiredness from the nervous tension of his win over Andreev on Friday. His big forehand was missing too often, he had no depth on his sliced backhands, and the accuracy of Davydenko's serving was making it a very one-sided affair.But Gasquet then won four games on the run to level the match, and at that point he looked the likelier winner. Remarkably he won just three more games, as Davydenko, in the absence of Marat Safin, did justice to the tag of Russia's No. 1 by winning both his singles."I think I proved today that I really am a top ten player, whether for myself in a tournament or in a team," said Davydenko, who first shook hands with the former Russian President and avid tennis fan Boris Yeltsin, and then spent about ten minutes signing scores of autographs. Yeltsin later joined Russia's on-court celebrations, forming an eight-man conga made up of the four Russian players, two reserves, Tarpischev and the jubilant Yeltsin.Though the French were understandably disappointed to lose, their travelling supporters behaved impeccably, and chanted "Igor Igor" when Andreev left the court after his decisive victory.