Murray and Inglot survive scare
THIS was the last dedicated doubles day before the Davis Cup changes to a two-day format from next year, and all matches become best-of-three sets.
And it was a good thing that this was not 2019. Otherwise Great Britain would have come within a point of another shock defeat in this tie against Uzbekistan, with Jamie Murray and Dom Inglot needing to save a set point to stop themselves going two sets down.
That was just about managed, and they emerged 4-6, 7-6, 6-2, 6-3 winners over Denis Istomin and Sanjar Fayziev to put Great Britain 2-1 up with two to play.
Their recovery means that one of Cameron Norrie and Dan Evans have to win their singles today to bid a winning farewell to the old format.
The prize is a potentially valuable seeding for next year’s new eliminator round, for which Andy Murray and Kyle Edmund will — hopefully — make themselves available.
Captain Leon Smith will surely be tempted to look at other doubles combinations as he plots the way forward for the coming revamped version of the competition. That will see the elimination match leading to an 18-nation finals event taking place over the course of one week, probably in Madrid.
Britain have seven doubles players in the top 100, and all will be trying to catch Smith’s eye.
Jamie Murray (right) admitted it had been tight yesterday, saying: ‘We were fighting hard the first couple of sets. We were in quite a few of their service games but couldn’t quite do it.
‘We fought hard to get through the second set and were so close to being two sets down. Then we kind of relaxed a bit and played really well in the last couple of sets.’
A crowd of more than 6,000 was inside Glasgow’s Emirates Arena where, as in February’s first round against Spain in Marbella, Murray and Inglot struggled to settle down with each other.
Their returns were especially poor as they tried to convert break points in the second set, and the crunch came after they missed three set points in the tiebreak.
Trailing 7-8, Inglot hit two service winners to avert danger, then Istomin hit a forehand into the net to level the match. Nerves were gradually settled, and the decisive game came in the third set when the GB duo finally secured a break of serve against Fayziev, going 2-1 up. From there they were able to assert their superior class, with Fayziev in trouble in all his service games towards the end. Lower down the scale of British tennis there was the encouraging development yesterday of 16-year-old Jack Draper, the highly-promising youngster from Surrey and son of former LTA chief executive Roger Draper, winning his first professional tournament. Draper, who made the final of the Wimbledon junior event, will become the only player of his age with a ranking below 1,000 after beating fellow Brit Andrew Watson, 3-6, 7-6, 6-0 in the final of Nottingham’s Futures event.