On March 4 and 5, Spain and Romania will meet in Marbella, as a tribute to Manolo Santana, to seek access to the Davis Cup finals. The national team will do so with Roberto Bautista, Pablo Carreño, Carlos Alcaraz, Alejandro Davidovich and Marcel Granollers, as Sergi Bruguera announced just over a week ago. Not even the brand new Australian Open champion, Rafa Nadal, nor Feliciano López, who falls to the benefit of Davidovich. The main news, however, is not in the aforementioned relay. In fact, he will be on the rival team.
Romania has already made its selection official and it contains an unexpected name, and it is not just any name: Horia Tecau. Along with him, Marius Copil, Nicolae Frunza, Stefan Palosi, Gabi Adrian Boitan and Gabriel Tifu, who acts as captain. In this way, then, the Romanian team recovers for the occasion a player who had announced his retirement in 2021, ahead of the Nitto ATP Finals. In them, for greater coincidence, beat Marcel Granollers and Horacio Zeballos to merge in a heartfelt hug with Kevin Krawietz, his partner.
Without knowing his state of form after these last months of inactivity, from the outset, inclusion is a small alert, because Tecau is a renowned doubles player. His track record in this format includes two Grand Slams alongside Jean-Julien Rojer (Wimbledon 2015 and US Open 2017) and another, mixed, alongside Bethanie Mattek-Sands (Australian Open 2012). A silver in Rio de Janeiro, along with Florian Mergea, complete the list of winners of a tennis player who became number two in the world with 38 doubles trophies.
Sinner and Ruud also look for the pass
In addition to the Romanian team, the organization of the Davis Cup has made public the full teams from 24 countries who will compete to be in the finals. In total, 116 tennis players who will seek to introduce their nations among the 12 chosen to fight for the title. Among them, the current number 8 in the world, Casper Ruud, in charge of Norway, or number 10, Jannik Sinner, flagging for Italy. Monfils or Swartzman will be other prominent names in this round. One that will be avoided by 2021 finalists Croatia and Russia and 2022 wildcards Serbia and Great Britain.