Who Will Be the Davis Cup Champions?
All eyes will be onMalaga in Spain this week as the 2023 Davis Cup Finals take place. Can Canada retain the title they won last year?
This long-running team tournament sees eight countries competing for the title. It runs from November 21-26 and that fact alone is rather controversial. The tournament takes place straight after the ATP Tour Finals and there are few players in agreement with its placing at the end of a long and hard season. Nor is the host nation taking part after losing in the group stages.
Weakened Canada May Struggle
Defending champions Canada have their work cut out to retain their title. It’s 8/1 at bet365 they are the 2023 champions. They are without their second ranked player Denis Shapovalov and that will make life difficult for them. Felix Auger-Aliassime will be playing and after a difficult year, he recently won the Swiss Indoors Championship.
They finished ahead of Italy, Chile and Sweden to qualify for the finals and take on Finland in the last eight. The pressure will be on Gabriel Dialla to get a win and their doubles team of Gabarneau and Posposil will look to continue the good form shown in the group stages.
Finland’s top player is Emil Russuvouri with Otto Virtanen being their other singles competitor. A lot will depend on the form of Auger-Aliassime but Canada may well be able to reach the last four.
The winners of this tie take on either Australia or the Czech Republic in the semi-finals. Australia have a strong line-up with world number 12 Alex de Minaur their top singles player.
Max Purcell will be a key member of their team as he’s talented at both singles and doubles. Purcell will team up with Matthew Ebden who’s ranked fourth in doubles. You can get 5/1 at William Hill on them lifting the trophy.
It could be a close match with the Czech Republic. Jiri Lehecka and Tomas Machac are both talented singles players and when winning Group C, all three of their doubles matches were won. Australia are worthy favourites and may well go onto reach the final..
Italy has the strongest line-up when it comes to singles players. Jannik Sinner is up to fourth in the world and they also have Musetti, Arnaldi and Sonego in their squad. Simone Belloli is a top 60 ranked doubles player and Italy should be able to get past the Netherlands in their quarter final. Bet365 offer 7/2 on them winning the title.
The Dutch side won’t be a pushover and Italy need to be at their best. Tallon Griekspoor and Botic van de Zandschulp are both capable of causing surprises. If it did go down to the doubles, Wesley Koolhof and Jean-Julien Rojer are both ranked in the top 20.
Don’t Rule out Great Britain
Finally, we have Serbia against Great Britain and Novak Djokovic (11/10 at BetVictor to win the Australian Open) wants team glory to add to all his singles successes.
The world number one will likely face Cameron Norrie in his singles match and should win comfortably. That’ll leave Great Britain needing to win the other two matches to go through. Dan Evans and Andy Murray are both absent through injury. Jack Draper is in good form and recently got to the final in Vienna.
His opponent could be Laslo Djere and it’s a 50/50 match. If the doubles match becomes a decider then the odds may well tip in the favour of Great Britain. They have Neal Skupski and Joe Salisbury who are both top ten ranked doubles players and will be hard to beat.
Djokovic may play the doubles too but lost in the match he played in the group stages. Great Britain could well beat Serbia even with Djokovic in their side.
So in the bottom half of the draw we could see Great Britain take on Italy in the last four. The Italians would be favourites to win that because of their strong singles line-up but it could well be a close match.
The Davis Cup Finals should be an exciting tournament. It may be missing a lot of the top players (especially with Russia banned, so no Medvedev and Rublev) but the matches we do have look set to give us a great end to the season with Italy lifting the trophy, but don’t rule Great Britain and Australia out.
