Messi fan and with an Argentine souvenir: the incredible weekend of Timofey Skatov, the Kazakh who was a nightmare in the Davis Cup

Timofey Skatov It was the great Argentine nightmare of the weekend at the Jockey Club of Rosario. He was the one who was bitter Tomas Etcheverry at the end of a suffocating Saturday, to exit the series 1-1 against Kazakhstan from the qualifiers of Davis Cup 2024. And it was he who won yesterday in two sets Francisco Cerúndolo in the first singles of a cloudy and more pleasant day, to equalize the duel and force the fifth point. Located in 278th place in the rankings, he surprised the local public with the comfort with which he moved and played on clay. And also for the shouts of encouragement in Spanish that he threw into the air in the matches won against the player from La Plata, 28th in the world, and the one from Buenos Aires, 22nd, which became the most important victories of his career.

Skatov was born in Petropavl, a city located in the central-northern part of Kazakhstan, and spent a good part of his life in Russia, a country where his family moved when he was one year old due to the career of his father Dmitrii, a football player, and where he started playing tennis. But when he was 17 years old, he settled in Valencia, to enroll in the Academy of José Alturformer coach of Igor Andreev AND David Ferrer, among others. He lived in that city for five years. And there he got used to playing on that orange surface so common in Argentine clubs, but little appreciated on Kazakh soil.

So much clay court play ended up adopting a style of play typical of tennis players from that country, as Guillermo Coria pointed out several times over the weekend. And he also learned to speak Spanish, a language he usually uses to encourage himself or blame himself for mistakes during matches, as he did in Rosario.

“I’m alternating languages,” he said, laughing, during his time at the Jockey. And he adds: “Maybe Coria is right when you say I’m a ‘Spanish player’. “I lived in Valencia for a long time and I took many customs from that city, both on and off the pitch.”

Furthermore, in those years a special bond with Argentina was born in Spain. Timofey became a fan of Lionel Messiwhom he met once by chance, when he met him in a shopping center in Barcelona and stole a photo from him, which he still carries in his wallet.

After one of his triumphs at the weekend, he was asked if he had a favorite football team in Argentina. And he didn’t hesitate. “I don’t have much idea. Where does Messi come from? “I’m with whatever club Leo belongs to,” he said.

Right-handed and with a two-handed backhand, quite abbreviated for modern tennis – where the rule seems to be “the higher, the better” – and with Roger Federer As a mirror image, Skatov had a good junior career. Although he has not won any Grand Slam (he was a semi-finalist in New York in 2017), at the beginning of 2018 he became number 1.

She shared a litter, for example, with the Italian Lorenzo Musetti and the American Sebastiano Korda. In those years some placed it ahead of those rivals, today placed among the best in the rankings. But the pressure due to the expectations that his talent and his growth had generated during his stay in Valencia, added to some injuries, did not allow him to explode.

He achieved his best ranking (123rd) in September last year and until this weekend had never defeated a player ranked in the top 70 in the world. In Jockey he beat two top 30 players, triumphs that he hopes will help him continue to improve.

“When you face Davis, the responsibility and pressure are greater than on the circuit. Beating two guys in the top 30 means I’m on the right track. “Now I know I can do it,” she said.

Cerúndolo himself recognized that Skatov made the duel, which in the preview seemed quite accessible for the Argentines, become very difficult.

“He was the player who played best during the two days. He beat me and Tommy. You have to give him credit, because if he hadn’t played very well, I think both Tommy and I could have beaten him. He held up very well in all the games We thought the series got a little easier when players started dropping out (Editor’s note: First Alexander Bublik Then Denis Evseev). But Skatov appeared, who played impressive tennis, a lot on clay, and that made things difficult for us,” said the Buenos Aires native.

Timofey took away from this series that newfound confidence in his tennis. And also another precious gift.

“On Saturday a man asked me if we could change the shirt. I told him I needed it to play so we could trade it today. We made it. My father asked me to bring him something from this trip. So I bring him the Argentina shirt”, said smiling Skatov, the most Spanish Kazakh, who was the nightmare of Rosario’s national team.