Guillermo Coria announced the Argentine team to receive Kazakhstan, with a key change

Guillermo Coriacaptain of the Argentine team that competes in the Davis cupconfirmed the five tennis players summoned for the series against Kazakhstan at the Jockey Club of Rosario on February 3 and 4: the singles Francisco Cerúndolo, Sebastian Baez y Tomas Etcheverryand the double players Horacio Zeballos y Maximo Gonzalez They will be the men who will seek promotion to the finals of the competition.

The base of the team is similar to the one that obtained the victory against Lithuania 4-0 in September in Buenos Aires and made it to this stage. That series had begun with the triumphs of Cerúndolo (21st in the ATP ranking) and Báez (28th). The duo made up of Máximo González and Andrés Molteni, one of the eight best couples of the 2023 season, got the decisive point and then Etcheverry (30th) won in his Davis Cup debut.

For the series against Kazakhstan, the only change will occur in the doubles: Horacio Zeballos (fifth in the ranking of that specialty) will replace Molteni. In this way, a duo that has played seven series since 2018 will once again form, in which they recorded five wins and two losses.

“In this series we summon Horacio Zeballos for two reasons. Firstly, because he needs to play a series to meet the organization’s requirement and be eligible for the Olympic Games. In this way, the three (Zeballos, González and Molteni) have the same chances of being in Paris. Beyond that, Horacio obviously deserves it because he is fifth in the world, he has been having incredible results, with a Masters final, and he knows Machi a lot,” Coria justified his decision.

For several seasons, Zeballos has played on the ATP circuit only in doubles in the company of the Spanish Marcel Granollers. Together they formed one of the best duos in the world. This year they were finalists at Wimbledon and the ATP Finals, and won the Shanghai Masters 1000. The 38-year-old from Mar del Plata has 20 ATP titles to his credit, including 6 Masters 1000, in addition to the 3 finals of Grand Slam tournaments played.

Máximo González has also focused his activity on the circuit exclusively on doubles. In 2023, the 40-year-old from Tandil, together with Andrés Molteni, won five ATP titles (they were one of the three pairs that celebrated the most championships) and also competed in the ATP Finals (they fell in the group stage).

As for the singles players, the results they obtained in the last months of last season, after the series against Lithuania in September, have not been optimal. Cerúndolo reached the round of 16 at the Masters 1000 in Shanghai and Paris (on his way, he beat Norwegian Casper Ruud, eighth in the ATP ranking), but also fell in the first round at the ATP 500 in Tokyo and Vienna. This week he began his competitive year with a loss to Spaniard Roberto Bautista Agut (57th) in the round of 16 of the ATP 250 in Hong Kong.

For his part, Báez could not achieve more than one victory in the last six tournaments of 2023 and in four of them he fell in his debut. In any case, this did not overshadow a season in which he won three titles (Córdoba, Kitzbuhel and Winston-Salem) and entered the top 30 in the world for the first time. This week, he lost to Slovakian Lukas Klein in the first round of the ATP 250 in Brisbane.

Etcheverry, after his debut in Davis, recorded his best results at the ATP 500 in Basel and the ATP 250 in Zhuhai, in which he reached the quarterfinals, while at the ATP 500 in Beijing he fell in the round of 16. In Basel he achieved two of the best triumphs of his career: he beat the American Sebastian Korda (23rd) and the Scottish Andy Murray (40th and former world number one).