if Roger Federer would have been playing then this would have been a formality for the Swiss. However in his absense the task of going to Kazakhstans capital Astana to win the match is left to Stanislas Wawrinka and Marco Chiudinelli. Wawrinka had a great US Open reaching the quarter finals and defeating Murray in the process. However he may suffer from his schedule and he had many injury timeouts during his matches due to a thigh injury. Will he be fit enough to play best of 5 sets matches just a week later? There is no doubt he will try his hardest for his beloved country. Chiudinelli is a solid player, good first serve and has some good wins this year. The tournament will be played indoors and Chiudinelli had some of his best results indoors last year reaching the semi finals in Basle and quarter finals in Bangkok, defeating the likes of Kohlschreiber and Gasquet.
Kazakhstan are an emerging nation in tennis. They have been playing Davis cup since 1995 as an independent nation and have moved up the ranks gradually.. They now have a very exciting team and have three youngsters who will all look to improve in the next few years. 23 year old Andrei Golubev is their number one player. He has had a great season moving from 131 to number 39 in the ATP rankings. He is very dangerous with powerful ground strokes and difficult to read serve. He won the 2010 Hamburg Open defeating Melzer and Davydenko. He also won a challenger tournament in Astana in 2009, the same place this tie will be played at. 22 year old Evgeny Korolev will play the 2nd singles match for the Kazaks. He has had a dissapointing 2010 to be fair and slipped down the ranks to number 73 from a career high of 46 in 2009. However Evgeny still has wins this year over the giant American Sam Querrey and Wimbledon finalist Tomas Berdych. He also has good fom indoors, reaching 4 ATP quarter finals in 2009 in Metz, Moscow, Bangkok and Basle. He is better than his ranknig suggests and is capable of causing an upset. The doubles match could go to either side with no doubles specialists in either side. Home advantage will help Kazakhstan big time!
PREDICTION:
Kazakhstan to win
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