The French only had a puncher’s chance.  They hoped that puncher was Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.  But with Nadal’s withering pressure, Tsonga had no answers.  Much like Gasquet, Tsonga was forced to hit winners off both sides, and missed frequently.  The third set was only marginally better because his serve was helping him hold serve.  Tsonga would lose 6-0, 6-2, 6-4.  If Nadal had fatigue from his US Open loss, it didn’t show.  Neither Gasquet nor Tsonga were able to push Nadal hard enough for it to matter.

Tsonga, in particular, looked uncomfortable on the clay, unable to get his movement right nor to get into many meaningful rallies with Rafa.  To be fair, Rafa is the king of clay.  There are a small number of players that can challenge Rafa on clay.  One of them might be del Potro, but he was playing in a different tie.

With that win, Spain clinched the third win and would head to play the winner of Serbia and Argentina.

With a 2-1 deficit and no one on the Serbian team that was capable of beating del Potro, Djokovic had to come out to play.  Djokovic was hoping not to have to play, but few knew how bad things were for the Serb.  The two played even in the first set, as Djokovic found he didn’t have enough weapons to break del Potro.  del Potro was serving well and hitting his forehand well.

The match went to tiebreak where del Potro got a minibreak.  When Djokovic hit a short ball, del Potro came to net to put away the forehand, Djokovic guessed right, got a lob over del Potro’s head and Djokovic volleyed del Potro’s weak pass to get to 5-6 on his own serve.  Unfortunately for Djokovic, del Potro took the next point and the set.

Djokovic looked like he might be able to break del Potro at 0-30, but del Potro would take the next 3 points and then the game.  del Potro then broke Djokovic in the next game.  In the following game, with del Potro coming to net, Djokovic tried to hit a pass that went a hair wide.  He screamed in what seemed an act of frustration, but the scream lasted too long, and Djokovic fell to his side, and had to retire, and so his losses now match McEnroe who had his third loss in Davis Cup (admittedly, he lost in the finals of Davis Cup against Sweden in an indoor clay court).

With that retirement, Argentina clinches the tie 3-1 and will face Spain.  They met a few years ago, with Nadal unable to play, but Argentina playing without del Potro.  Apparently, he and Nalbandian don’t meet eye-to-eye.

In a qualifying round, Federer was able to beat Tomic in 4 sets.  Wawrinka managed to get a break lead in the fifth before the match was called because of darkness.  Australia wasn’t too happy by how long the match went before they decided it was too dark.  When the match resumes, Hewitt will serve to stay in the match and Wawrinka will try to serve to get Switzerland the win.

Get well to Novak Djokovic whose record season now includes two retirements.

Although Tennis Channel made up for Davis Cup results in the live portions, the “crawl” they use at the bottom, which could have been updated at 6 AM and shortly after Spain beat France was, instead, many hours old.  You would think they could keep this up-to-date.  It just needs one responsible person to keep it up-to-date.  Get this fixed, TC!