Sorry for the lack of updates here! I’m working at a summer camp since two weeks ago and that’s taken up a lot of my time. As you probably already know, Fer lost in the first round of Wimbledon to Fabio Fognini, so he’s been taking some down time over the past two weeks, and now we’re heading into Davis Cup quarterfinal weekend. Fernando, as well as David Ferrer, Nicolas Almagro and Feliciano Lopez, will make up the team that Spain will send to France for their quarterfinal tie on the indoor hard courts of Clermont-Ferrand. They’ll face a French team comprised of Gael Monfils, Gilles Simon (who replaces and injured Jo-Wilfried Tsonga), Michael Llodra and Julien Benneteau.

The tie will be broadcast live on several international stations, and you can check here for times and channels! Below, you can read and listen to an interview that Fer did with Craig Gabriel:

“Everyone who asks me that, how I see this tie, I say that it’s going to be one of the hardest for the last many years. They have so solid team. They will put, what I think, what I’ve heard, a very fast court. It’s going to be very difficult.

“It’s going to be a really hard, tough crowd, but we have already experienced in Davis Cup with tough crowds, like Argentina. I think that in the players playing now, all of us, we have already enough experience to handle that situation. So I think it’s going to be everything on the court.

“Both teams are unbelievable complete teams, two singles unbelievable and doubles so good, both of them. I think it’s going to be so, so close. Maybe it’s going to 3-2, or maybe it can be 5-0 for one or 5-0 for the other one because that every match is going to be so hard and so close. In Davis Cup you never know. It’s that thing that makes Davis Cup so special.”

“[Winning in Argentina] was of course one point in my career that everything changed. I was No. 16 in the world in that match against Acasuso and just one month later I did the semis in Australia and I went into the Top 10 for the first time in my life.

“The confidence, the spirit, everything that the tie in Argentina gave me, like a person, like a player, it was so much, so important for me. After that I need to say that everything changed so much.”
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click above to hear an audio version of the full interview