Davis Cup: Opening Day Continuous Blog ...

Davis Cup play kicks off this evening, 11pm ET for those state-side like myself. The first rubber of Japan-Croatia shoukl set the tone for a fun weekend of action.

Soeda vs. Dodig
The opening tilt as the Japanese host Croatia is a fascinating one for me. Soeda is playing some solid tennis to start 2012 off. He made the semifinals in Chennai and then won the Honolulu Challenger a couple weeks ago. Dodig has the more recent work on this indoor surface, having won a couple matches at Zagreb. He's always had a big serve, but has trouble harnessing his ground strokes some times which has led to an inconsistent career thus far. Dodig has been poor in Davis Cup play at 2-7 overall, but several of those came when he was a very young player. In the past two years, he's 1-2 with losses to Kohlschreiber & Kevin Anderson, nothing to be ashamed about. Soeda is 17-4 in his Davis Cup career, but the majority of those matches have come against very low level competition from some of the worst countries in this competition. I don't think there's any added pressure on Soeda here. I believe the Japanese believe Nishikori can win them any singles rubber in this series, so Soeda should be going out here with the mindset that he can really help put an early dent in Croatia's plans of advancing with a win. His return game will be the obvious key here. If he can serve well and get into Dodig's serve, I like the Japanese to draw first blood.