Liptak payed Daniela against Spain when she was clearly hampered by injury. That should never have happened and counts hugely against him. As unimpressive as Claudio has been,he is no way responsible for the injury that has blighted her season.

However I don't know what he has done to Daniela's serve. Since when has she had so many problems with her ball toss?

Daniela basically gave up her season to get Slovakia in to the World Group.

Daniela probably wouldn't have played if she was against a better player than Dominguez Lino. I don't think she'd have played against Medina Garrigues, Martinez Sanchez or Suarez Navarro if they'd been playing. Likewise, if Slovakia had a better no. 3 than Rybarikova then Daniela wouldn't have played. Rybarikova was hopeless in the ties against Serbia in 2010 & 2011 and I doubt she'd have been better against Spain. Cepelova had a good run at Wimbledon beating Medina Garrigues and Schmiedlova got to the Roland Garros junior final so there is some strength in depth. Ultimately, it would have been Daniela's decision to play and I don't think she'd have played if she didn't want to or couldn't. A far worse decision was playing doubles with Gajdosova in Stuttgart a couple of days later when she was obviously injured and had absolutely nothing to gain by doing so.

Who knows, I think Daniela may have wanted to get redemption for the loss to Serbia in 2011. She got so much criticism for that and she admitted it hurt her. This is going over old ground. Dominika beat Jovanovski and Ivanovic retired against her while Ivanovic played great against Daniela while Jankovic was rested and was able to outlast Daniela who'd played the day before. The doubles was freakish as Serbia were hopeless for the first set and and a half but they suddenly started hitting winners at will from 5-1 Slovakia in the second set while Rybarikova absolutely crumbled and I don't think she held serve for the rest of the match. She served for the match twice and blew it both times and she dropped serve to lose the second set and the match, basically it was an errorfest from her and Daniela was essentially playing by herself. Daniela held serve all the way through the final set, she was the only player to do so, but because she lost 3 matches she got the blame. Dominika was picked for doubles this year.

Dominika made a comment after she lost at the Olympics that she wasn't too bothered about losing and that slams were more important to her and she got so much criticism in Slovakia, a lot of it really vicious, that she had to make a statement a few days later saying that she was committed to playing for Slovakia. Daniela, in contrast, got a lot of praise for her commitment and patriotism.

Discretion is the better part of valour. Magdelena has been good enough to win 3 tournaments on the WTA-she is certainly good enough to beat Dominguez-Lino. Plus,the captain has the final word on who plays,and as her coach last year,he would have known all too well the seriousness of the problems with her heel. Yet in his interview on the Saturday night,Liptak said he was sure she would be able to play,injury be damned.

4 months later,we have to watch matches such as the one against Wozniak in Canada where she is still clearly ailing in her movement and consequently producing awful tennis. It remains an unforgivable decision to play her against Spain IMHO.