The Davis Cup final between France and Belgium should be a balanced affair. Only in the doubles the roles are clearly distributed.
On the Bucket List of almost every major tennis player, you’ll probably find the Davis Cup title win – once the big dream of winning a Grand Slam tournament has come true. Over the past three years, Roger Federer and Stan Wawrinka have been successful in beating France against the French in 2014. Twelve months later Andy Murray with the success in Belgium. And a year ago Juan Martin del Potro made an epic comeback against Marin Cilic in Zagreb.
The forthcoming match between Belgium and France, which will start on Friday in front of more than 27,000 spectators in Lille, lacks a major champion in the singles, but with David Goffin, the guests are bringing along a man who on Saturday celebrated the greatest success of his career with the victory against Roger Federer in the semi-final of the ATP finals in London. And who was by no means without a chance in the final against Grigor Dimitrov.
However, the fans will not have to do without Grand Slam glamour this coming weekend: Pierre-Hugues Herbert and Nicolas Mahut are proven double experts, have already been successful in Wimbledon and at the US Open. In pair running the advantage should be on the side of the hosts – Ruben Bemelmans and Arthur de Greef, so the Belgian captain Johan van Herck put these two for the doubles because, spread qua successes no great fright.
In the singles, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga enters the final duel with a 4:2 record against David Goffin, in 2017 there was only one meeting: the Frenchman could win this in Rotterdam on his way to the tournament victory in the final. For Lucas Pouille it looks even better against Goffin: three matches, three victories, all in 2016.
Steve Darcis, on the other hand, is a blank sheet of paper for all the French. And that even though the Belgian experienced rider has been on the ATP tour for more than a decade.
In any case, one man has a flawless record before the final: Yannick Noah. The last French Grand Slam Champion (in Paris in 1983) led the L?Équipe Tricolore twice as captain in a final – and both in 1991 with Henri Leconte and Guy Forget against the favoured US Americans Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi as well as five years later in Sweden the weekend with the title.
“That’s what I’m trying to do,”Noah explained.”We’re trying to write our own story. We have already won as a French team – but that was a long time ago.” 16 years, to be precise. At that time, France won 3-2 in Australia. For the Belgians, on the other hand, a triumph would be the very first.