S is for Spring, Sibiu, Safin...

Davis Cup Tie: Romania vs. Russia

After a long wait, the weekend of 6-8 March arrived with the beautiful promise of live tennis and heaps of fun. I hopped on the bus to Sibiu and met up with my friends from Bucharest (whom I hadn't seen in eons!) who miraculously managed to snatch some tickets to the DC tie (I must mention that the venue in Sibiu is minuscule! 2000 seats only, so you can imagine the whole fuss to get tickets)

We got to the Sala Transilvania after the first match began, so our seats were taken by some "gentlemen" so we resorted to the stairs to watch Marat Safin, Russia's number 1 player and my friends' favorite player, versus Romanian Victor Crivoi. In spite of Crivoi's decent display (it was actually quite remarkable for such a mediocre fella like him), Marat was clearly better and won in straight sets 7-6(5)6-4 6-4. No surprises here. The second match of the day put our no. 1 player *cringe* Victor Hanescu against Mikhail Youzhny and everyone expected an interesting encounter between players of close value, considering that Hanescu had beaten Misha in Doha earlier this year. The outcome was a bit surprising as Hanescu was totally crap (he is usually crap, but on Friday he was TOTALLY crap) and the Russian had no problems whatsoever, winning 6-4 6-2 6-4. The score was now 2-0 for Tarpischev's boys and we left the arena to have some fun around in Sibiu, ending Friday in a bar called Nadine.

Saturday! The second day of the tie brought the doubles match, but not before the official presentation of the two teams. First up was the visiting team starting with Marat Safin (crowd: regular applause; us: *fangirlish screaming and clapping :))*), Mikhail Youzhny, Dmitry Tursunov, Teimuraz Gabashvili and the captain Shamil Tarpischev. Then the Romanians with Victor Hanescu *yawn*, Victor Crivoi, Horia Tecau and Marius Copil, lead by the new captain Andrei Pavel (who got more applause than anyone, obviously :P). Next up was the match: Safin and Dmitry Tursunov paired up against Horia Tecau and 18 year-old Marius Copil. The Russians won the first two sets 6-4 7-6(2) after some signs of nervousness from debutant Copil and lack of concentration from Tecau. Loudly and loyally encouraged by the crowd (who even sang the anthem! awesome!), Marius and Horia managed to turn the match around claiming the next two sets in tiebreaks. They got a break in the third set and Copil served out the match with an ace. What a classy way to make your debut in such an important competition!

Unfortunately, our "no.1" managed to crap his pants and lose to Tursunov (who replaced Safin in this match) after leading with 2 sets to 0 and a break! So typical of him. If I were Pavel, I'd be really pissed at him. After all these years in which Hanescu pissed all over DC matches and Andrei had to clean up after him every time, now he chokes like the loser he is. Not that I expected Romania to win, because none of our second-choice players stood a chance against Youzhny, but Hanescu was very poor and it's sad to think that he's our best player at the moment. I had to leave after this match, but I'm sure that Gabashvili vs. Crivoi, the dead rubber, was not such an interesting match :P Ah yes, I almost forgot! Before Hanescu's display of helplessness, all the women and girls in the crowd got flowers from the Romanian players as it was March 8 :D We got flowers from Copil :D

All in all, I had an amazing time with my friends in this beautiful city (with EXTREMELY cheap taxis!) and had the opportunity to see live tennis and the Russian team, my third favorite non-Romanian DC team (after Spain and France).

Here are some photos from the tie. If you want to see all the 260 photos that I have uploaded on Picasa (out of the 600 that I took :P) go to my Picasa page (Non-tennis photos will follow in an upcoming post, so stay tuned)