Translated material
Mister Ace
Despite the large score (3:0) after the first two days of the Czech Republic - Croatia semi-final, the confrontation turned out to be very stubborn. It took five sets to determine the winners of both Friday's singles matches. And in the meeting between the Czech Radek Stepanek and Karlovich (6:7, 7:6, 7:6, 6:7, 16:14) many achievements were established.
First of all, Karlovic made 78 aces in a game, setting another record for the most number of serves in ATP level matches. The previous record, by the way, belonged to him and was set on the courts of Roland Garros in 2009 in a match against Lleyton Hewitt. True, then the Croatian, whose height is 208 cm, a record for tennis players in the top 100, and whose speed of even the second serve often exceeds 230 km/h, did this only 55 times.
In addition, Karlovich confirmed his reputation as the athlete who most often plays tiebreakers on the ATP Tour. His match with Stepanek lasted 5 hours 59 minutes, and in terms of the number of games - 82 - this match equaled the Davis Cup record since the tie-break was introduced. At the same time, only three games were missing from the absolute Davis Cup record of all time.
But Radek Stepanek survived this marathon. “Everyone knows about Karlovich’s killer, phenomenal serve. Therefore, the only thing I could do in this game was to wait patiently for my chance,” AFP quotes Stepanek. - Mentally I was strong and calm, because I knew that there was no turning back, this match was decisive. That’s why I just tried to ignore the fact that they put me up against the wall and were shooting at me with balls, and waited for the right moment.”
The second singles match, in which the Czech Tomas Berdych beat the Croatian Marin Cilic, also turned out to be protracted - 6:3, 6:3, 3:6, 4:6, 6:3. But, despite this, both Berdych and Stepanek took part in the doubles match the next day, in which they easily beat the Croatian duo of Marin Cilic and Lovro Zovko - 6:1, 6:3, 6:4.
The other finalist of the Davis Cup, the Spanish national team, did not have so much strength and emotion. Despite the absence of Rafael Nadal in their ranks, the Spaniards dealt with the Israelis without much difficulty. First, David Ferrer beat Harel Levy in three sets - 6:1, 6:4, 6:3, and then Juan Carlos Ferrero defeated Dudi Sela - 6:4, 6:2, 6:0. Only in the doubles match was Israel able to provide some resistance to the favorite, but still ended up losing: Feliciano Lopez and Tommy Robredo were still stronger than Jonathan Erlich and Andy Rahm - 7:6, 6:7, 6:4, 6: 2.