Serbia relishing home tie

The Beogradska Arena, or Belgrade Arena, depending on what language you’re speaking, is certainly an impressive looking building that is situated in an area known as new Belgrade.

The circular structure is the venue for this weekend’s Davis Cup by BNP Paribas World Group first round tie between host nation Serbia and USA. It’s a first time meeting between the two countries.

The place is expected to be full with 20,000 people in full voice creating what should be an awesome atmosphere, the type of atmosphere that only really comes when national pride is on the line.

Davis Cup has proven time and again that it creates an extra special bond between teammates as they play for their nation, in front of their compatriots. It’s a type of feeling that puts goose-bumps on goose-bumps.

Djokovic is ‘kingpin’

It’s a view that is certainly not lost on the Serbian team led by Novak Djokovic, who is obviously the kingpin in this neck of the woods.

The crowd, they all acknowledge, is going to be key even though the Serbs are favoured against Sam Querrey and John Isner, who, in the absence of Andy Roddick, will form the American singles line-up.

“This is going to be a very important match,” Djokovic said.

“The Americans have the most success in Davis Cup and even though they have come here without their strongest players, it is still going to be a very strong team, but with the support of the audience we can get to the quarterfinals which would be a great success for our national team.”

Who plays second singles after Djokovic is still up in the air for the Serbs and captain Bogdan Obradovic was very “open” when he said “one of these guys will play,” referring to Janko Tipsarevic and Viktor Troicki.

Doubles showdown

It was a similar line from Nenad Zimonjic, one of the world’s great doubles players, when he was asked about his potential partner.

“Our opponents (Bob and Mike Bryan) are one of the strongest teams, if not the strongest, and this is going to be a very difficult match but we have a good team and we can surprise them and we can win,” Zimonjic said.

“Whoever is going to play with me, it’s going to be a difficult match but we are going to put up a very good fight and my experience can help in a great way to win this match.

“I’m an optimist and the boys here are very good players, players of very good quality and they have proved to us they can win anyway.”

Home advantage

The Serbs have had some incredibly tough first round ties in recent years, playing away against Spain and Russia and then having to fight back into the World Group via the play-offs.

This is now their chance with being at home, having all their players fit and Djokovic coming off the back of a title win last weekend in Dubai – confidence is naturally pretty good.

Even though there is a long way to go, maybe this could be the year for this young nation in the world’s biggest and greatest annual team sporting competition. But for the moment they will just have to savour being at home because they’ll be playing away against almost every one of their potential future opponents.

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