Format: Round-robin - 15 teams divided into four pools. The four pool winners will play off with the two winning nations advancing to the World Group II Play-offs in April 2009. The nations finishing last in their pool will play-off with the two losing nations being relegated to the Europe/Africa Zone Group II in 2010.
It looks like Monica has got 1st blood against Kasia Piter. It appears she won by a score of 1-6 6-2 6-0. Slow start but once Monica got in a groove obviously not much Kasia could do about it.
Providing either Sorana can beat Aga or Monica and Sorana can beat the Polish pair I think Romania should not only win this tie but go all the way to getting promoted to the World Group II division. I am pretty optimistic.
Her singles form in 2009 has been disasterous, she is 1-3.
Can't believe Sori and Monica got blown out so badly in the doubles. They looked pretty good in Melbourne, definitely not playing this type of tennis. What in the world went wrong? It's sad; I thought this was a great team on paper.
I like the team
If it was up to me, I would've chosen Cirstea, Olaru, and Niculescu for sure! Then I would've decided between Dulgheru and Halep for the last spot. Gallovits wants to play for Hungary so I doubt she'd play, Halep is top 200 and she will be on the team in the future so it would be good for her to get experience and she is in good form, and Dulgheru has no Fed Cup experience and is not a great hard court player
I think Sori will play singles #1 and I think Ralu and Alex will both play singles #2 and doubles will be Monica and Raluca every time
Gallovits refused to play for Romania in 2008 when the team needed her, I doubt she will be called again. If she didn't want to play for Romania which has a better team and after all she's romanian I doubt she'll play for Hungary.
At the moment Dulgheru is better than Halep even on hard court so the choise is the best one..
But she said it herself that she would like to play for Hungary's Fed Cup team but she wasn't 100% sure and that was last year so I guess she decided not to
Maybe she said that after Beijing, when she was not allowed to play for Romania because she refused to play FedCup. But since Ruxandra became president of the federation she said that Gallovits will always be an option for FedCup, so she's not a closed chapter
No Sorana and no Monica? Yipes. That's a real shame. It really is time Romania got into the World Group II but I can't see it happening with this team at all.