Romania face an uphill task to avoid relegation from the World Group as they take on the Czech Republic in this weekend's Davis Cup playoffs.
The Romanians are badly missing their star man Victor Hanescu and with no singles players inside the top 100 it's easy to see them languishing in the Euro-African Zone this time next year. They had a taste of the big stage earlier this year, losing 4-1 to Argentina in round one of the World Group but it could well be their last for some time,
However team captain Andrei Pavel is remaining positive in the face of a Czech side featuring world number nine Tomas Berdych and a resurgent Radek Stepanek,.
“We are the underdogs, they are by far the favourites, but Davis Cup is a team competition and you never know what can happen,” Pavel said. “The conditions are good, the court is perfect. I’ve been trying to get the guys to think about the positive pressure of the situation, rather than see it as negative.”
They will be hoping that Berdych's fitness plagues him again over the weekend. The Czech looked like a serious contender for the US Open when he outplayed Roger Federer in Cincinnati but had to retire during his third round clash with Janko Tipsarevic.
However going back through the history of the World Group unearths one very telling statistic. Since its creation in 1981, the Czechs have spent just one year out of it, a record shared only by the United States and Sweden. It looks set to continue that way.
