The obvious choices to play in the Davis Cup Finals were not so obvious after all.

The hottest four players for both teams were: Djokovic and Troicki for Serbia and Monfils and Llodra for France.  And yet both captains went in obscure directions.

The Serbian captain elected to play the older Tipsarevic over Troicki even though his rankings have generally hovered around 40.  Troicki is ranked higher, had a recent tournament win.  I mean, the only thing I can think of, other than maturity, is that Troicki’s father is Russian.

The French captain, Guy Forget, also made a peculiar choice.  Gilles Simon had about 6 months as a top 10 player back at the end of 2008.  He’s steady, he moves well.  He had beaten Nadal and Federer.  But he had a poor 2009 and even poor first half of 2010.  Meanwhile, Llodra had beaten Djokovic recently, and his lefty serve-and-volley style would give most players trouble.  He played in the last two ties.  It seemed like an obvious choice, and yet Forget went with Simon, hoping his steadiness would wear Djokovic down (it didn’t).

Djokovic took his match, as expected, and Monfils had his win, mostly as expected.  The point would have been somewhat moot had Tsonga been at all healthy.  Neither the two lead Frenchmen seem all that healthy, and lately, Monfils has held up better than Tsonga.

On paper, it seemed the doubles would go to France.  Llodra and Clement are veteran doubles players that have done well on Slams.  Zimonjic is one-half of a very successful doubles team.  It’s just that the other half isn’t Serbian.  The Serbs had lost the last two doubles as they tried to find a good pairing for Zimonjic.  Last time, they tried Djokovic, and that didn’t work.  However, with Troicki, they came very close to upsetting the French duo.  In the end, the French pulled out a win in the fifth set despite being down two sets to 1, and playing in Serbia.

The final score: 3-6, 6-7 (3), 6-4, 7-5, 6-4.

Sunday, Monfils will play Djokovic and this may be the key match.  Djokovic has never lost to Monfils.  Their closest 5-setter was a first round encounter in 2005, long before either player was a household name.

This may be decided by the players both teams chose to add in a peculiar move: namely, Tipsarevic and Simon.  I’d give the slight not to Simon since Simon has had the higher rank and Tipsarevic has never been ranked too high.

Simon leads their head-to-head 1-0 in a very close match at Rotterdam in 2008.

We’ll see tomorrow in the last “real tennis” of the year!