Super Bowl Sunday may be over, but the Davis Cup will serve up some heated rounds of sport this Friday, Saturday and Sunday, Feb. 10 through 12, as the United States battles Romania in first-round action. The event is sold out.
The La Jolla Beach & Tennis Club, 2000 Spindrift Drive, will host the matches.
Team United States tennis stars Bob and Mike Bryan, Andy Roddick and James Blake will compete to bring home the 32nd Davis Cup title. Patrick McEnroe is the team captain.
The 27-year-old twin Bryan brothers will lead the U.S. as the number-one doubles team in the world, a ranking they’ve held for the past two years. Since joining the team in 2001, they hold a 6-1 record in Davis Cup doubles. The Bryan brothers have won 27 doubles titles as a team, and are considered the most successful sibling doubles team in the Open era of professional tennis.
Andy Roddick, 23, and James Blake, 26, will compete in the singles matches. Since joining the team in 2001, Roddick holds a 17-6 record for Davis Cup singles matches. Ranked third in the world, Roddick emerges from a strong year with a 59-14 record and five singles titles on three different surfaces. He was also the U.S. Open champion in 2003.
Blake carries a 9-4 overall record in the Davis Cup with 6-3 in singles and 3-1 in doubles, having represented the U.S. in six “ties” (rounds) over the past five years. Blake has also gotten off to a powerful start in the season with a career-fourth singles title in Sydney, and a third-round finish at the Australian Open. In 2001, Blake became the first former Harvard student to represent the U.S. in the Davis Cup in 75 years. Dwight Davis, a senior at Harvard, founded the Davis Cup in 1900.
Romanian contenders include Victor Hanescu, Andrei Pavel, Razvan Sabau and Horia Tecau, plus team captain Florin Segarseanu.
But tennis stars not only compete in La Jolla, they also live in the neighborhoods. Ted Schroeder, a La Jolla resident for 50 years, was hailed as a tennis champion from 1939 to ’51. He was the world’s number-one tennis player in 1942, and held second place from 1946 to ’49. He played on five U.S. Davis Cup teams, 1946-49 and in 1951.
Asked how it felt to be a tennis star, Schroeder replied, “I never thought about it. I had certain ambitions. The biggest one was to get out of my environment. I wanted a little better than I started with. It has done everything for me.”
The Davis Cup is played in a knockout series of four rounds, which are held in February, April, September and December. If the U.S. wins this weekend, the next round will be played at home. Bidders seeking to host the next round have not been disclosed.
The victorious team will face the winner of the first-round match between Chile and the Slovak Republic in the quarterfinals. The first round will be played on a hard court; the second on a grass court.
The Davis Cup is the premier, international team event in men’s tennis. It is also the largest team competition in sport. More than 134 nations entered the contest in 2005 to battle for a place in the elite World Group of 16 nations that play in the Davis Cup. The 2006 teams include Spain, Russia, Australia, Croatia, France (ranked the top five, respectively), Austria, Argentina, Sweden, Belarus, Switzerland, Germany, Netherlands, Romania, United States, Chile and the Slovak Republic.
Singles will begin the first round on Friday, Feb. 10 at 10:30 a.m. Doubles will serve off at 12:30 p.m. on Saturday; and singles will be played again at 10:30 a.m. on Sunday.
Ticket-less fans can view the matches at home on cable television’s Tennis Channel.
For more information about the Davis Cup visit www.daviscup.com, or call the La Jolla Beach & Tennis Club, (858) 454-7126.