Davis Cup Draw - Preview

Tomorrow at 11.30am CEST (6.30am Cordoba/Vamos David blog time) the draw for next year's Davis Cup will be pulled at Geneva, Switzerland. A live radio broadcast of the draw ceremony will be available via the Davis Cup website.

There are 16 nations in the World Group, eight of them seeded, including Argentina, and eight unseeded (those that qualified in last weekend's World Group playoffs). This year's finalists, i.e. Spain and the Czech Republic will be placed at the top and bottom of the draw - like the #1 and #2 seed at a tournament. So the Argentine team will find itself either in the Spanish or the Czech half.
As one of the seeded nations, Argentina will face an unseeded team in the first round. The unseeded teams are France, Sweden, Switzerland, Serbia, Belgium, Chile, Ecuador and India.
Which makes for some very different, possible first-round scenarios:
France or Sweden - away tie for Argentina
Chile, Ecuador or India - home tie for Argentina
If the Argentine team draws Switzerland, Serbia or Belgium, however, the right to play at home will be decided by lot. Usually, the choice of ground is determined by which side hosted the previous encounter between two nations. But Argentina and Serbia have never faced each other in Davis Cup before. And the last ties against Switzerland (1952) and Belgium (1948) took place too long ago to be taken into account by the ITF's reckoning, the deadline being 1970.
In other words, from an away tie against France to a home tie against India pretty much anything is possible for Argentina in the first round...

Let's hope they'll get a good draw. For the first round and the rest.