The Thursday before the Davis Cup match between Austria and Australia (live on DAZN, Friday from 11:00 a.m.) had the potential to become hectic. In fact, the players took the requirements from press conference, draw and training extremely calmly.
By Jens Huiber from Graz
The change of shifts between the Austrian and Australian teams on Thursday afternoon took place in friendship. Dennis Novak had a fling with John Millman, regretting that the Federer conqueror from the US Open would not be on duty as early as Friday. Millman gave back the kindness, maybe we’ll meet again on Sunday in the fifth singles.
This depends primarily on John Millman’s health, but no less on the score after the match between Dominic Thiem and Alex de Minaur. This is scheduled for Sunday first, if not one of the teams already has three points on his account, it’s about the sausage again in best-of-five mode.
The Australians arrived as a compact team, such as Jason Stoltenberg, a second coach alongside Lleyton Hewitt, and the great Tony Roche gave relevant advice during double training. Also to Alex Bolt and Marc Polmans, both classified between 100 and 200 in the world, who took Tennis Australia as sparring partner to Graz.
So money does not matter to those associations that organise a Grand Slam tournament. Bolt, a left-hander, and Polmans, who plays with the right, have certainly delivered their best Marach/Melzer imitation, as Jürgen Melzer emphasized after the official draw.
Why? Because on the other side of the network John Peers and Lleyton Hewitt practiced a joint deployment of the two on Saturday is urgently assumed.
6,000 spectators are expected to make the provisional stadium on the grounds of the Graz Fair tremble, with Dominic Thiem setting the pace. Thiem expressed great confidence in Dennis Novak, why not, Novak qualified for three of four Grand Slam tournaments in 2018.
The T-shirts stayed on the men this time, but it was still pleasantly warm during the final training session of the Austrians. Local weather forecasters are announcing rainfall for Friday, but optimists are predicting drought until around 7 pm.
This should be enough to get a clearer picture of the outcome of this game, in which more is at stake for Austria than for the guests. With a victory, Thiem and Co. would not only qualify for the 2019 World Group, but would also qualify for Round One among the twelve seeded nations. In the event of a defeat, there are several scenarios that the team in general and Jürgen Melzer in particular will only deal with when it comes to that.
The Australians are there in any case, of course they are also keen on a settlement. In any case, there could be a reunion early next year, then down under. The surface would certainly be different, but the exchange between the players of Austria and Australia would probably be expected at a similarly friendly level.