Blake made life difficult for himself Friday by battling for 2 hours 4 minutes before losing a meaningless match to Tommy Robredo, 6-2, 3-6, 7-5.

"I hate dead rubbers," Stan Franker, the Dutch Davis Cup coach, said of the meaningless final match.

(Strings of fewer than 30 characters were apt to turn up meaningless matches - including common proper names and phrases.)

The England players are finding it hard to get motivated for meaningless matches like this.

Blake's only loss came in three sets to Tommy Robredo in a meaningless match because he had secured his semifinal spot.

Instead, the Europeans were drinking Champagne while Woods was in the 18th fairway, in the process of halving a meaningless match against Jesper Parnevik.

The first of these to be announced was the inclusion of a semi-final stage in 2007, following complaints of there being "too many meaningless matches".

Blake later beat Clément in straight sets in a meaningless final match.

Becker and Goran Ivanisevic, who lost a meaningless match to Michael Chang today, are already guaranteed spots in Saturday's semifinals.

Too much Test cricket, a tiring merry-go-round, meaningless matches, mini-series against worthless opponents and too short series against meaningful ones.