Russian No. 1 Mikhail Youzhny is not in his country’s tennis team for a crunch Davis Cup tie because no one called him into the team, "as funny as it seems", he said Saturday.
Russia is 2-0 down after the first day of its best-of-five-matches Davis Cup playoff against Brazil, in which defeat would see Russia drop out of the top-tier World Group for the first time in history.
For Friday’s opening singles rubbers, Russia captain Shamil Tarpishchev sent out Igor Andreev and Teymuraz Gabashvili, respectively ranked 67 and 134 places below world No. 29 Youzhny.
“There actually wasn’t a refusal. As funny as it seems, no one invited me, no one called me,” Youzhny said.
Asked whether he thought Tarpishchev was deliberately trying to lose the tie, Youzhny declined to comment.
“That question isn’t for me,” he said.
The other members of Russia’s team are Alex Bogomolov Jr., who is ranked 90th in singles and 89th in doubles and world singles No. 465 Stanislav Vovk.
Bogomolov and Vovk face Brazil’s highly rated doubles specialists Marcelo Melo and Bruno Soares in the potentially decisive third rubber Saturday on the clay of Sao Jose do Rio Preto, Brazil.
Other top 100 singles players left out of the Russia team are No. 48 Nikolay Davydenko and 96th-ranked Igor Andreev, who Tarpishchev said was not picked to allow him to focus on raising his singles ranking.
Tarpishchev has not said why Youzhny and Davydenko are not in the team.
