Twins Fit the Bill for the U.S. Again

Bob Bryan pivots and runs toward the backstop in pursuit of a lob that has floated over his head. Overtaking the little yellow tennis ball, with his back to the net, he slaps the ball between his legs at Sweden’s Jonas Bjorkman on the other side of the net. Startled, Bjorkman muffs it.

The sun-baked gathering of 6,054 filling the Delray Beach Tennis Center on Saturday loved it, saluting Bob with two or three lines of the “U-S-A!” chant before the Bryan Show (a.k.a. the Davis Cup doubles) continued.

There are two Bryans, of course, Bob and Mike, and they won, of course -- as the world’s No. 1 team should -- over Bjorkman and Thomas Johansson, 6-3, 6-4, 6-4. The result takes much of the heat off their teammates, Andy Roddick and Mardy Fish.

Held to a 1-1 draw in singles on opening day by Bjorkman’s defeat of Fish, the favored U.S. now leads the best-of-five quarterfinal series, 2-1. Roddick will be favored to get the clincher today over Bjorkman, though it could go down to the fifth match: Fish and Thomas Enqvist.

But the Bryans have done their job, a job that has been bungled frequently in recent years by a revolving-door cast of U.S. doubles teams that usually failed and split faster than Hollywood couples: 22 doubles lineups since 1992, posting a 14-13 mark. Until the Bryans.

Not since Californians Rick Leach and Jim Pugh went 4-0 during the triumphant Cup campaign of 1990 has an American pair won three matches as the Bryans have. They are making people forget the dismal history.

Overwhelming in their serving, returning and volleying, the identical twins are bigger (6 feet 5) and more fun than any of their predecessors.

“We know Davis Cup is serious stuff, representing your country,” Mike said, “but we can laugh and smile, do the chest bumps the fans like, and still pay attention to business.”

Obviously there’s a little showboat in them, but also a lot of talent for the often-overlooked game of doubles. They cover the court like a blanket and have a perfect Cup mark: nine sets played and won against Slovakia, Austria and Sweden. If the U.S. wins today, the next nationalistic gig would be against Belarus in a September semifinal.

“I gave them the job after they won the French Open last year,” U.S. Captain Patrick McEnroe said. “They’d been wanting it for a while, but I challenged them, held out a carrot. I told them they had to win something big.

“It’s huge to have a doubles team you can count on like this. It means you can split the four singles and win.”

Although the Swedes weren’t terrific servers, left-hander Bob in the right court and right-hander Mike in the left made them feel even less competent and more troubled by sending practically every serve back at them. Bob put 92% of his returns into play, Mike 88%.

Even though Mike was broken twice and Bob once, their serves were spiky. Bob had five aces and seven service winners (one of those at 139 mph); Mike one ace and seven service winners.

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Belarus reached the Davis Cup semifinals for the first time, taking an insurmountable 3-0 lead against Argentina.

Vladimir Voltchkov and Max Mirnyi, who each won singles matches, teamed to beat Lucas Arnold and Agustin Calleri, 6-3, 6-4, 6-1, in doubles at Minsk.

“For 10 years we struggled for this result, and today’s victory was a reward,” Belarus Captain Sergei Teterin said.

Associated Press contributed to this report.