Davis Cup Qualifier 2019: Even on Kolkata’s grass-courts, India find Italy too hot to handle on opening day

It took Italy less than three hours to ground India’s turf theory to dust.

Andreas Seppi overcame a few nervy moments in the beginning before ousting Ramkumar Ramanathan 6-4, 6-2 while debutant Matteo Berrettini turned in a strong, assuring performance to beat India No 1 Prajnesh Gunneswaran 6-4, 6-3. After all the talk of home advantage on the grass-courts of Kolkata’s South Club, India finished Day One of the Davis Cup qualifier against Italy 0-2 down on Friday.

To be fair, the Indian team was rolling the dice by opting to play on grass-courts. More than their comfort on the surface, it was their opponents’ discomfort on it that was the influencing factor. Italy, with players much higher ranked than the Indians, would have certainly run away with the advantage if they were playing on clay or hard-courts. Kolkata’s historic grass-courts were supposed to at least slow them down if not stop them.

While the formula has worked wonders in the past, it evaporated quicker than morning mist on Friday.

Seppi, 34, had stepped in as Italy’s No 1 player into the tie, with the top-ranked player Fabio Fognini deciding to skip the tie and World No 19 Marco Cecchinato thrust into the doubles rubber. Though Seppi had been wary of Ramkumar’s attacking serve and volley game going into the match, it took him only about half an hour to work around it.

The centre court at South Club was tailored according to India’s requirements. Patchy and unpredictable, the surface produced uneven bounce and the ball seemed to lose velocity after hitting the ground. Both Ramkumar and Seppi survived break points on their opening service games and spent the first few minutes trying to understand the nature of the surface.

The Indian, ten years younger and ranked almost 100 places below his opponent, was daring, darting to the net quickly to cut down the angles and cut short the rallies. In the beginning, Seppi was finding it hard to negotiate his gung-ho opponent and the unpredictable bounce. To make up for the slow, low-bouncing turf, Seppi over-hit a few shots and was finding it difficult to find any sort of rhythm.

A lot had been made about Ramkumar’s efficiency on grass. He had played well to beat the then World No 8 Dominic Thiem at an ATP event in Antalya, Turkey in the summer of 2017 and had made the finals of the ATP Hall of Fame Open at Newport’s grass courts last year. But Seppi is no mug on grass. In 2015, he had contested in the Halle Open final against Roger Federer and has gone as far as the Round of 16 at Wimbledon. More importantly, he has survived on the pro tour for more than 16 years — a lifetime of experience adjusting to new players and different surfaces.

Even though Ramkumar hustled as much as the surface would allow him, Seppi hung on patiently. He got the chance he was waiting for in the ninth game. After squandering a break point in the previous game, the Indian had a wobble on his serve, sending down three double faults to go down 30-40. He managed to level it to deuce with an ace down the middle, but couldn’t quite clinch it. Seppi rattled off three brilliant points — first a forehand cross-court pass, followed by a forehand return winner and then smartly picked up the ball on half-volley past Ramkumar to earn his break.

That was enough for him to prise open the match. He closed the first set at love in the 10th game and didn’t give Ramkumar a single break opportunity in the second. Having got used to the bounce, Seppi reset to his solid baseline play, barely missed any shots and came up with some textbook passing shots to clinch the second set 6-2 in less than 30 minutes.

In the second singles of the day, Berrettini justified his selection ahead of Cecchinato by rolling over India’s best player in the tie.

The highly-rated Berrettini, only 22, is a man of his times. His ATP bio states his favoruite movie is Interstellar, TV show is Breaking Bad and musician is Eminem. Unlike his clay-bred Italian predecessors, Berrettini is no grinder. He believes in first strike tennis and, on the day, had the audacity to pull it off.

Neither the surface nor the fact that he was playing in Italian colours in a Davis Cup match for the very first time seemed to affect him. Standing tall at 6’5 and weighing 90kg, Berrettini is a big guy with a big game. He powered down his serves (more than 200kph first serve) and his forehand to keep the match on his racquet. The Italian broke Gunneswaran in his first service game in both the sets, which meant he was always a step ahead of the Indian.

“The courts were exactly what we wanted,” said India’s non-playing captain Mahesh Bhupathi after the close of first day. “All of us have played Davis Cup before and we understood the pressure of playing for the country. We are all disappointed. But tomorrow is a live day and stranger things have happened. We’ve come back from 2-0 only twice in the recent few years, against Brazil and China. But Italy is better. Our focus is tomorrow. We will be disappointed for an hour and then we will be practising. We know we had a job on hand yesterday. And we still have a job now but it’s harder.”

A halo of hope and history that had kept India upbeat in the run up to the tie is severely diminished. On Saturday, India, as they have done countless times previously, will look to doubles to revive their chances.