USA's Controversial Davis Cup Choice Causes Outrage Among Players And Coaches

Friday, 22 November 2024 at 03:55

byJordan Reynolds

Serena Williams' former coach, Rennae Stubbs, disagreed with Team USA's Davis Cup captain Bob Bryan's move to play Ben Shelton and Tommy Paul ahead of the doubles specialists Rajeev Ram and Austin Krajicek against Australia.

Team USA was the favorite before the quarterfinal tie against Australia. Its lineup, which included singles players Taylor Fritz, Ben Shelton, and Tommy Paul, as well as the experienced doubles partnership of Rajeev Ram and Austin Krajicek, looked formidable.

Fritz, this year's US Open and ATP Finals runner-up, was always going to be chosen for one of the singles matches, but captain Bryan may have found the choice between Shelton and Paul challenging.

Shelton is the more electrifying player and reached an indoor final in Basel last month, but Paul is higher-ranked and won an indoor title at the Stockholm Open, which also took place last month.

Bryan chose Shelton, but the big-serving 22-year-old lost a dramatic battle against Thanasi Kokkinakis. Shelton had four match points but eventually lost an extraordinary final-set tiebreak 16-14 to the Australian.

Fritz kept American hopes alive with an excellent performance, beating Alex de Minaur in straight sets. That meant the tie came down to the final doubles match. Australia chose doubles specialists Matthew Ebden and Jordan Thompson for the decider.

Team USA surprised by not picking Ram or Krajicek. Instead, Shelton partnered with Tommy Paul for the match that would decide which team reached the semifinal to face Italy, who progressed to that stage after Jannik Sinner and Matteo Berrettini won the crucial doubles match.

Bryan's decision backfired horribly. Shelton and Paul were comfortably beaten by Ebden and Thomspon. The captain's decision not to pick a doubles specialist looked worse after Ebden played superbly.

In a press conference after Team USA were eliminated, Bryan outlined why he took that decision, saying it was an instinctive move to try and surprise the Australians, who were undoubtedly expecting Ram and Krajicek to play.

"We had great options for doubles but I opted for the fire power of the singles players to surprise them. It was a match up decision. I decided in the 15 minutes between the singles and the doubles match. The idea was to surprise them."

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Stubbs was perplexed by the move, outlining this in two social media posts. She said only something behind the scenes to do with form could plausibly explain why Bryan made that decision since an experienced doubles team usually beats singles players who are not used to playing together.

"Doubles specialists that are major champions, more than not, will beat great singles players that haven't played together before."

"There has to be a reason. Whether it was the fact that the doubles guys were not in form? I don't know."

2018 Wimbledon mixed doubles champion Nicole Melichar-Martinez also described how perplexed she was by the decision in a post on X (formerly Twitter), writing that doubles specialists are called that for a reason.