Former Wimbledon and French Open Champion Jan Kodes provides his perspective to WorldTennisMagazine.com in a column previewing this weekend’s Davis Cup final be
tween Spain and the Czech Republic in Barcelona. Kodes helped the Czechs (then Czechoslovakia) reach the Davis Cup final in 1975, where it lost to Bjorn Borg and Sweden, and again in 1980 where the Czech team, lead by Ivan Lendl, defeated Italy to win the title.
The Czechs enter this big match with Spain with gained confidence after beating France, Argentina and Croatia and will become a strong opponent to Rafael Nadal and his colleagues in the final held in Barcelona this weekend. The Spanish team chose the clay, their best surface, and will be very strong, but the indoor game is always a little faster and therefore I think this tie will be very interesting to see. For Czech players, Radek Stepanek and Thomas Berdych, this is a good chance to prove themselves and show how really good they are in such an important match. Since their past performances in Grand Slams have not been to dazzling, this is a great opportunity for them. The Spaniards are heavy favorites since they also have more players on their team to choose from for singles, but the full pressure is on them!
I think we could have won the Davis Cup more times in the past, if we didn’t lose Ivan Lendl due to the political affairs in 1985. He stopped playing for us after that year. The time when a I served, as Czech Davis Cup captain for six years (1982-1987), I started to write my new biography book, “A Journey to Glory from Behind the Iron Curtain“ which will be published in 2010! in English, includes other tennis tales from Czechoslovakia from 1964-1998.
JAN KODES: Kodes played internationally before the open tennis began and his best results started from 1969 up to 1977. He played in five Grand Slam singles finals and won three of them at Roland Garros (1970-1971) and Wimbledon (1973). He was able to win in total 25 singles and 31 doubles titles on the international world circuit. He played in two Davis Cup finals – 1975 and 1980. In the first Davis Cup final I n1975, Kodes, the Czech No. 1 player, was beaten by Bjorn Borg, who collected all three points for Sweden. Swedish won the Davis Cup for the first time in the history over Czechoslovakia 3-2 at Royal Indoor Hall on very fast Holmsunds-plattan rubber tiles surface in Stockholm in 1975. Kodes also teamed with Vladimir Zednik in doubles lost the crucial doubles point. The second Davis Cup final for Czechoslovakia was in Prague at the Eishockey Stadium on rubber supreme surface. In opening match, Tomas Smid beat Adriano Panatta from two sets down in five sets. The Czech team, powered by Ivan Lendl, also won the very important doubles point to get the third point when Lendl-Smid overwhelmed the strong Italian team Panatta-Bertolucci in another five setter. Shortly after this final, Kodes left the Davis Cup team where he was a stalwart for 17.years since 1964.