Our crews covered two ties of contrasting fortunes in the recent Davis Cup first round, working together with the International Tennis Federation.
One team was in Glasgow, UK for GBR v USA, and the other in Kraljevo, Serbia for serbia who hosted Croatia. Here World Number 1 Novak Djokavic dominated the tie and was involved in winning 3 of the matches including both his singles, but also the doubles match. The team went on to win 5-0 in a crushing victory.
Meanwhile, world number 3 Andy Murray was playing at home in Glasgow for the first time in many years, and led an unbelievably tight, and incredibly noisy encounter with the USA who they defeated in San Diego in the same tie last year.
Murray won the opening rubber against Donald Young as expected, but James Ward, ranked outside the top 100, played the match of his life against top 20 player John Isner, coming back from 2 sets down and on the brink, to an astonishing 15-13 victory in the final set, to give GBR a 2-0 advantage after the first day.
Day 2 saw the British pair of Dom Inglot and Jamie Murray take on the world number one pair of Mike and Dan Bryan who expected a swift victory, but in the same vein as Ward, they fought back from a 2-0 deficit in the 3rd set to take the match to a 5th deciding set. That went to 7-9 in a match of over 3 hours.
Andy Murray needed no second invitation in the 4th rubber however, and took down Isner 3-1 to ensure a second consecutive victory over USA in the Davis Cup and send the full house in Glasgow through the roof with noise. Final result – 3-2 and GBR now face a home tie with France in the quarter finals.