Anybody out there with Eurosport can tell me if they are televising the dead rubbers today? Because if not, I doubt there will be a livestream either. The BBC had a nasty habit of not showing dead rubbers.

Armchair wrote:

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I would imagine that knowing he wouldn't be expected to play dubs as well might give Andy a slightly better feeling about participating in DC.

Nadal was having a (legitimate) moan about the scheduling of DC so soon after a Grand Slam. There's still a way to go in balancing the professional ($$) tour and any perceived kudos in representing your country.

Really enjoyed the dubs though well done guys !!!

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Actually, I don't think the week after a Slam is that bad.  Only 4 slam semi final participants are likely at all to be playing singles within a week of the Friday start of a Davis Cup, and the 2 finalists are normally finishing their final on the Sunday before.  So even they should be able to cope as it seems they do.

Davis Cup participation in such a week should be no real problem at all to the other players including the majority of top 20 players.

While yes we want the very top players playing Davis Cup,  the top few are in danger sometimes of only looking at self rather than the bigger picture. 

The calendar is far from perfect, but the Davis Cup timing wouldn't be at the top of my list of problems.

If anybody else is having problems with the LTA site, this works for me http://www.oleoletv.com/watch/live/streaming/online/free/tv/video/channel/feed/link/broadcast/vivo/gratis/p2p/directa/10/british-eurosport-link-1.html

DC at the weekend was a lot of fun.  I agree with Indiana that DC scheduling is far from the top of the list of problems the powers that be face and I hope they don't muck about with DC as a format - it's the only realistic chance for home supporters to get together for a few days and see a lot of matches home players are guaranteed to be playing in, so I'd hate to see them change it to a 'World Cup Finals' type format at a single venue.

You'd think the fact that the atmosphere at DC ties is far better than at most other events would be enough to convince people that DC isn't as broken as many people seem to say it is.

Also, while I can understand why the big 4 feel there needs to be some change in scheduling in general (not just DC), I hope they don't manage to take complete control of the agenda - as Indiana says, the top players only look at things from their own point of view, so if they took complete control, you can bet the lower-ranked players (by which in this context, I mean anyone outside the top 20-30) would lose out as well as the fans.

Of course, it's natural that the big 4 should be fairly self-centred - you must have to be very selfish at times in order to get to where they have and it's not meant to be a criticism in this context, it's just that this needs to be recognised and the views of other parties involved need to be taken into account as well. The danger is that the view of the most popular players becomes the accepted view simply because they are popular.

Also, while Muzz seems reasonably balanced about it all, as he was about the USO scheduling, Rafa (to take the most obvious example) just seems to moan about everything in his usual 'butter wouldn't melt in my mouth' style and half the time ends up contradicting himself. He should stick to what he does best, i.e. playing (he did a fantastic job in the tie against France - wish Muzz could recover from slam Final defeats that fast!) - I wouldn't trust him to organise a piss-up in a brewery, or at least not to organise it in a coherent, even-handed way.

That said, obviously I hope the authorities do bother to listen to the big 4's concerns and act on them where they have a good point.

RJA wrote:

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Assuming that Wawrinka finishes off Hewitt tomorrow we will only be due home ties against Slovakia and Finland and 'by lot' against Belgium and either Denmark or Bosnia (2-2 at present)

Other nations in group 1 are Romania, Israel, Portugal, Netherlands, Slovenia and South Africa.

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Yes, that's all correct. There will be 11 teams in Group 1 as in 2011, which is close to the minimum possible, the Euro-African teams having gone 4-1 in E-A v rest of the world World Group playoff ties, though SUI and RUS got pushed desperately close by AUS and BRA respectively.

Denmark are the last team, having beaten Bosnia 3-2 in the G2 promotion playoff in the other half of the draw from us - the result has still not been updated on the DC site, but it was confirmed on the Bosnian TA site yesterday and later tweeted by Freddie Nielsen.

The four seeds (which definitely won't include us!) plus one other will get a bye in R1.