US Davis Cup team moves on

The defending champion United States Davis Cup team advanced to the quarterfinal round with a 4-1 victory over Austria. Andy Roddick and James Blake got the team off to a great start on Friday with victories over Jurgen Melzer and Stefan Koubek respectively. Then, on Saturday, the doubles team of Mike and Bob Bryan took care of business with a 6-1, 6-4, 6-2 win over Julian Knowle and Jurgen Melzer. That win sealed the victory and sent the Americans through to the next round.

They will now face a French team, which defeated Romania 5-0 in the first round, in the United States during the weekend of April 11-13th. The French and US teams have met 14 times previously with each squad winning seven of those matches. The last time they met was in 2002, and France won 3-2.

In other Davis Cup action, Russia, the Czech Republic, Argentina, Sweden, Germany, and Spain all advanced to the quarterfinals. The Russians, led by Mikhail Youzhny and Nikolay Davydenko, won the first three matches of their battle with Serbia and will now host the Czech Republic. For the Czechs, Tomas Berdych and Radek Stepanek won their singles matches on Friday and then teamed up on Saturday to win the doubles!!

Argentina moved past a British team that was without Andy Murray 4-1. Argentina didn’t even lose a set in the matches that counted. They will host Sweden in the quarterfinal round after they barely got by Israel. Sweden was down 2-1 after the doubles match on Saturday, but Thomas Johansson and Jonas Bjorkman rallied to win their singles matches on Sunday to push Sweden through to the next round.

Germany needed Sunday’s first match to reach the quarterfinal round, as Philipp Kohlschreiber won both his singles matches and was one half of the winning doubles team. Germany will now host Spain, which blew by Peru 5-0, without its best players. Spain was missing Rafael Nadal, David Ferrer, and Juan Carlos Ferrero, but still managed to sweep Peru. They were led by Nicolas Almagro, Tommy Robredo, Feliciano Lopez, and Fernando Verdasco.

Chakvetadze wins title

The world’s sixth ranked player, Anna Chakvetadze, won her seventh career title over the weekend at the Open Gaz de France in Paris. She defeated 19-year old Hungarian Agnes Szavay 6-3, 3-6, 6-2, and is now 7-0 in her career in WTA Tour finals. Three of her titles have come at Tier II events or higher, which is very impressive considering she just turned 20.

For Szavay this was a very good week for her because Australia was not kind. She lost in the first round at Gold Coast and in the Australian Open, but she defeated the likes of Elena Dementieva and Daniela Hantuchova to reach the finals this week. She is now ranked a career high of #18 in the world.

Radwanska wins in Thailand

Top-seeded Agnieszka Radwanska won her second career title over the weekend, beating American Jill Craybas 6-2, 1-6, 7-6(4). After splitting the first two sets, Radwanska came out firing in the third set, going up 5-1. She had match points at 5-2 and a 5-4, but Craybas didn’t lose her focus and managed to win five consecutive games. Craybas was then up 6-5 and had a match point of her own, but this time Radwanska didn’t back down. She went on to win 7-4 in the tiebreaker to take the match and the title.

Radwanska is now ranked #21 in the world, which is her new career high. She has been playing extremely well at the beginning of the 2008 season, as she reached the quarterfinals at the Australian Open and now has already won a title. Craybas moved up five spots in the rankings from #77 to #72 in the world.

NBTA has big presence in Delray Beach

The men are in Delray Beach this week for the Delray Beach International Tennis Championships, and quite a few of them have spent significant time at the Academy. In the qualifying draw, Max Mirnyi, Ricardas Berankis, Kei Nishikori, Filip Krajinovic, Pavel Chehkov, Michael McClune, Phillip Bester, and Gastao Elias all played. Mirnyi and Nishikori are still alive and will play today to try and get into the main draw. Mirnyi takes on Amer Delic while Nishikori will face Alex Bogomolov Jr.

There are also three players in the main draw that we are very familiar with: second-seeded Tommy Haas, Belgian Xaiver Malisse, and American Jesse Levine. Haas will face Diego Hartfield in the opening round, Malisse, the defending champion, will take on Bobby Reynolds, and Levine will play Gilles Muller.

American James Blake is the top seed here this week.