ROSAMUND wrote:

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Having been to Bath and Copper Box arena the event has given me a feeling of well being apart from Katie's defeat yesterday. It lived up to its build up. In the past they did have a 1 week Fed Cup. It was held in London in 1963,Eastbourne in June 1977 and Nottingham in July  1991. If you get a 1 week event  it will probably finish up in the Far East. If Johanna Konta had stayed with her roots she might well be appearing in the Fed Cup final for Australia with Ashleigh Barty. Also I think Annie K was luck to have Jo in top form whereas Jo never approached such form with Judy Murray. There are other countries basically dependent  on 1 player. i.ie. Australia with Ashleigh  Barty and Rumania with Simona Halep.

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If it was in the Far East (or even Australia) then it would be grim as we'd hardly get to see any of it - the Australia-Belarus tie sounded exciting, but I didn't get to see a second of it with the 3am starts. All the money these days seems certainly does seem to be coming from the Far East, particularly China, so my biggest fear would be it ending up there, but there is talk that it might be held in the Czech Republic, which would be a great choice. Unless of course that's a holding venue (like Madrid in the DC) and it did end up in China, like the DC is going to Indian Wells (although that's quite convenient for us).

It does sound like Barty pretty much carried Australia today with her winning her two matches and Stosur losing both, before they combined to win the doubles, and it was almost similar with Halep in her tie, but both Romania and Australia do have more depth than a lot of nations like GB, Canada and Netherlands who really are pretty reliant on one superior player (although Boulter's stock has gone up this year). Gavrilova is out of form this year (hence Stosur's call up), yet she is normally a solid top 50 player and they might have Tomljanovic if she sorts her eligibility issues with the ITF. Sharma looks like bursting on the scenes as well. Buzarnescu has unfortunately never been the same player since her US Open Swing injury last year, but if she can recover then that's a great option and they do have top 100 players like Niculescu, Begu etc. to call upon. But yes, if Halep and Barty decided to withdraw like Bertens did then they'd go from a Fed Cup favourite to a relatively average side. Czech Republic, USA and Belarus and slightly lower down, Germany Spain and France, seem to have the most depth. Slovakia are also reasonably solid, but don't really have that one standout player yet (Kuzmova maybe down the line).