Americans win big at Davis Cup......

The U.S. Davis Cup team finished off the improbable on Saturday.

A day after Mardy Fish and John Isner notched career-defining wins, the Americans clinched the first-round match against heavily favored Switzerland as Fish and Mike Bryan rallied to defeat Roger Federer and Stanislas Wawrinka 4-6, 6-3, 6-3, 6-3. With the doubles victory, the United States swept the Swiss in Fribourg, Switzerland, and advanced to the Davis Cup quarterfinals, where it will face France or Canada in April.

“It feels pretty good to win those [Davis Cup rubbers],” Fish said after the match. “I certainly know what it’s like to lose, and it’s not a great a feeling.”

There were plenty of reasons why the Americans weren’t supposed to win. They were on foreign soil, both literally and figuratively, playing in front of a boisterous, capacity crowd in Switzerland on red European clay, a surface that has long been considered American kryptonite. On top of that, Andy Roddick was out with an injury and Bob Bryan was home in Florida with his newborn daughter.

Oh, yeah, and then there was this Federer guy, who was playing in his first World Group tie since 2004. Federer and Wawrinka are the 2008 Olympics doubles gold medalists and Federer had never lost a best-of-five singles match to anyone on the American bench.

But if Fish’s five-set win over Wawrinka in Friday’s first match signaled anything, it was that this was an American team that saw its history not as a trend, but a challenge. The last time Fish played a five-set Davis Cup match was last July, when the newly minted American No. 1 fell to Spain’s Feliciano Lopez 6-4, 3-6, 6-3, 6-7 (2), 8-6. When Fish was unable to serve out the match in the fifth set against Wawrinka on Friday, squandering a match point at 5-4, it was beginning to feel like déjà vu all over again.

http://tennis.si.com/2012/02/11/davis-cup-us-switzerland/?xid=cnnbin