Sweeting, Kryvonos named Davis Cup practice partners

On a rainy Tuesday afternoon in New York, Patrick McEnroe announced his Davis Cup team for the tie in Moscow Sept. 22-24.

There was no suspense as the team is as everyone expected: James Blake, the Bryan twins and Andy Roddick, who have played the first two rounds.

But the practice partners do change, as the USTA likes to provide as many players as possible with the opportunity to experience Davis Cup, and for this tie Ryan Sweeting and Nikita Kryvonos were named to accompany the team.
Sweeting's success this spring and summer have raised his profile, and it was common knowledge that he would be selected, but Nikita Kryvonos was a surprise to most of the journalists at the press conference.

I saw Nikita at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center (BJKNTC), where he trains, on Sunday and he told me he had been asked. Now ranked inside the the ATP top 500, he won a round in the men's qualifying here using his wild card, and has won a Futures event on hard courts in Canada in March and made the finals on clay in May's Futures stop in Orange Park, Fla. Kryvonos turned 20 last week and became a US citizen last year. His native language is Russian, so he'll be able to serve as an interpreter as well as a hitting partner in Moscow.