The Davis Cup held quarterfinals a week after the conclusion of Wimbledon. Due to its timing and due to Andy Roddick’s loss in the final, the team replaced Roddick with Mardy Fish.

Croatia fielded Marin Cilic, their highest ranked singles player, and the huge serving, Ivo Karlovic. They decided to host the match in Croatia.

There was a decision to be made, namely, how good was James Blake playing. The problem, really, is who to replace Blake with. Even if Blake hasn’t been playing that well lately, the next highest ranked player, after Mardy Fish, is Sam Querrey. Normally, Querrey does attend Davis Cup ties, but he had a rather unique opportunity. A big server like Querrey is likely to play well in the Hall of Fame Championships, held in Newport, Rhode Island on grass.

This tournament is generally very weak, as evidenced by Fabrice Santoro being two-time defending champion. You won’t find Federer or Roddick playing at Newport. It’s way too small, especially off the heels of the end of Wimbledon.

Croatia, naturally, picked the surface that would hurt Americans the worst, indoor clay. One could argue that grass might be pretty good for Croatia, too, but given the history of Americans playing awful at the French, it made some sense to play on clay.

That decision made some sense after Day 1, when Blake lost a five setter to Ivo Karlovic, followed by Fish losing a five setter to Marin Cilic. With the US down in a hole, 2-0, it was up to the Bryan brothers to win the doubles. The Croatian coach decided not to have Ivo Karlovic play doubles, probably predicting a loss regardless of whether Karlovic played or not, and opting to rest the big guy in case he was needed.

That left James Blake playing Marin Cilic. This was not a good matchup for Blake. Although Blake has a good head-to-head record against Cilic, they’ve never played on clay. Cilic won the match easily in four sets and with the win, Croatia had a 3-1 lead, and was off to the semifinals.

Croatia had won the previous two encounters with the US. Prior to that, Croatia wasn’t a separate country and was considered part of Yugolslavia, which shows how infrequently Croatia makes it this far.

The fifth rubber (as it is called in Davis Cup) was meaningless, with Croatia having an insurmountable lead, so the teams decided to put in backups. In particular, US decided to put in lefty, Bob Bryan, while Croatia put in 112th ranked, Roko Karanusic, who played doubles for Croatia. The Bryan brothers focus almost exclusively on doubles. Indeed, this year, Bob Bryan has not played any singles, and has no ranking.

So what are the limitations of Bob Bryan’s singles game? Recall he’s 31 years old, and mostly plays doubles. He has three problems. His backhand is adequate to keep in a rally, but it’s no weapon. His footspeed is adequate to move around, but Bryan is a bit on the heavier side, although he is pretty tall at 6’4″. His big weapon is his forehand. It says something about the modern game that a doubles player like Bryan has to play singles from the baseline. You would think, against a player ranked below 100, he could sneak in on a few serve-volley points. Nope. OK, just saw a serve and volley point. Needless to say, he doesn’t use it much.

To his credit, Bryan took a set off of Karanusic and broke to stayed in the third set. Bryan just saved match point by serve and volleying, and approached the net to get to game point.

Oddly enough, Bryan has played Karanusic before in singles, quite the surprise given how rarely Bryan plays singles. They met, not suprisingly, in Davis Cup, in a first round match against Croatia. Bryan won that match in three sets, in a meaningless rubber. Croatia, perhaps much like now, had already won the tie.

This begs the question. Where is Davis Cup lately? At one point, all the Australians were faithful players of Davis Cup. The Americans were too. Jimmy Connors was the noted exception, who avoided it most years, focusing on singles, but John McEnroe, for all his antics, was a Davis Cup stalwart. Since then, players have occasionally played Davis Cup, but not been so committed to it. Blake and Roddick have been pretty good about playing Davis Cup.

Roger Federer is noted for not playing Davis Cup that much. If it means interfering with his quest for history, Davis Cup gets the boot. Earlier this year, Switzerland was slated to play the US. With Federer’s record against both Roddick and Blake, there was a strong likelihood that Federer himself could put a 2-0 score. Wawrinka could probably win one more match, or Fed could team with Wawrinka in doubles, a team that beat the Bryan brothers at the Olympics. But Federer begged out of it, and the US won rather handily.

There has been some suggestion that the Davis Cup be played in two weeks with every round played at the same time. This might be interesting if a site would be willing have four different surfaces, say, clay, grass, indoors, and hard courts. But what you’d lose, big time, is the crowd. You could play it in a month, if you like, where the matches are played each week, or if you only permit, say, 3 days off between rounds, it could be done in 3 weeks or so. The likelihood that the tennis calendar could be cleared long enough for this to work out is probably low, and the format is likely to remain unchanged.

Well, you know, even in a dead rubber match against players that generally don’t get to see singles play, it was kinda fun watching. This isn’t the epitome of quality play, but there is a rooting interest. Bryan managed to get a break back, push into a tie-break, and win the tie-break over Karanusic. Devin Britton came to help the team practice. He won the NCAA finals last year, and was a semifinalist at Wimbledon juniors, and has decided to go pro.

A few other results. Israel completed their improbably upset over Russia, 4-1. Russia decided to go with Andreev and Youzhny and not play Marat Safin who only played doubles.

The Czech Republic won a tight one over Argentina, impressive given del Potro generally gives you two wins. Juan Monaco is also an up-and-coming player, but the Czechs were hosting the tie on indoors, and Monaco lost to Stepanek and Berdych. The Czechs also won doubles.

Spain won despite Kohlschreiber winning both his singles. They played Ferrero in the fifth rubber instead of Robredo. I don’t know the rules about swapping in a different player. Spain has such a huge stable of players, that they field a strong team even without Nadal.

Well, now a few weeks off before the next Masters 1000 tournament, as we all wonder if Nadal will be healthy enough to play by the US Open. He’s already had three weeks off (Wimbledon plus one more week). The next Masters 1000 tournament is in Montreal (the Rogers Cup, formerly the Canadian Open) on August 8, so there’s still three weeks before that.

Until then, enjoy!