Davis Cup Final Betting: Home advantage favours Czechs

Can Navratil get the best out of Berdych this weekend?

It's the 100th Davis Cup Final this weekend in Prague between Spain and the Czech Republic and in the last tennis action of the year Sean Calvert fancies the hosts..

The 2012 tennis season concludes this weekend with the Davis Cup Final, which this year is contested by Spain and the Czech Republic in a repeat of the 2009 final.

This year's final is the 100th in the history of the competition and in a role reversal of that 2009 match the tie is being hosted by the Czechs on indoor hard at the O2 Arena in Prague.

The hosts will be looking to ensure that they perform better than in the 5-0 drubbing they received three years ago on the clay of Barcelona and they are much better placed top do it with home advantage and no Rafa Nadal to contend with. 

The layers give the slight edge to the Czechs at around 1.865/6 to win this tie and as ever they'll be relying on their usual pair of Tomas Berdych and Radek Stepanek in singles and doubles, with Lukas Rosol and Ivo Minar as back up.

Spain have chosen David Ferrer and Nico Almagro for singles play and World Tour Finals doubles champions Marcel Granollers and Marc Lopez for Saturday's doubles. 

And it looks a very close match, with the performances of Almagro in the singles likely to be key.

Ahead of the tie the ever quotable Berdych has also identified Almagro as the weak link in the Spain side and essentially implied that he's got no bottle when it comes to big maches - a bit of a cheek coming from the mentally suspect Czech.

Berdych does have a point though in the sense that Almagro's record on indoor hard courts is pretty awful for a player of his ranking and his best ever win indoors came last month in Valencia when he beat world number 23 Sam Querrey.

He's never beaten a top-20 player indoors and has a losing record to both Stepanek and Berdych, with the latter having won the last nine sets between the pair - hence his pre-tie comments.

The hosts are surely likely to have prepared a pacy surface to hamper the Spaniards and the visitors will be relying mainly on Ferrer to continue his recent form and take down both Berdych and Stepanek in the singles. 

It's going to be a big ask for Ferrer physically, as his battles with Berdych and Stepanek could well go long. The world number five has played four five set matches against Steps already in his career and his most recent two with Berdych have also gone the distance, albeit in best of three set matches. 

Stepanek withdrew from Bercy to save himself for the World Tour Finals doubles and this weekend and will surely see this as a last chance for him to bring Davis Cup glory to the Czech Republic. 

The outcome will come down to a number of factors; Ferrer's fitness, Berdych's mental strength at vital times, the doubles, and Stepanek beating either Almagro or Ferrer and I think it would a monumental achievement for Ferrer to guide Spain to the win.

For Berdych, if he manages to get two or three points for the hosts it could well galvanise him for next season's majors, as it did when Novak Djokovic brought victory to Serbia a few years ago and set him on that amazing run of wins. 

In a tough tie to call, I'm siding with the Czechs, as the pressure on Ferrer will be too much with Almagro likely to be little more than a silent partner in these conditions. 

Recommended Bet
Back the Czech Republic to beat Spain at 1.865/6