Smith wants fitting farewell to format
Early scare but Jamie and Dom battle to win
BRITISH captain Leon Smith last night called for his team to bid a fitting farewell to the current Davis Cup format today on what will be an historic afternoon at the Emirates Arena.
The GB team will go into the final session 2-1 up against Uzbekistan after Jamie Murray and Dom Inglot won the doubles. One more win is required for victory in what will be the last-ever best-of-five-set matches seen in the competition.
Glaswegian Smith needs the victory to give Britain the best chance of a good draw in next year’s revamped system.
‘It certainly helps to get a seeding for next February’s play-offs, although there might be some tough ones anyway,’ he said. ‘But it’s more than that, we had more than 6,500 people in there today. It’s been excellent support every time we’ve brought the Davis Cup to Glasgow and we want to go out properly.
‘People have talked about this match not meaning a lot but it didn’t look like that over the last two days. You’ve seen blood, sweat and tears and it shows you what’s at stake playing here.
‘We hope to give a proper send-off to best-of-five-set matches.’
Cameron Norrie and Dan Evans are set to play the remaining two singles matches for GB.
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. Had this been 2019 then Great Britain would have come within a point of another shock defeat in this tie against Uzbekistan, as Jamie Murray and Dom Inglot needed to save a set point to stop themselves dropping the first two.
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.
The recovery from a very unconvincing start 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, which Andy Murray and Kyle Edmund will — hopefully — make themselves available for.
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.
Aside from possibly having Murray Jr to call on, Britain has seven doubles player in the top 100, including Scotland’s Jonny O’Mara. All will be trying to catch Smith’s eye.
Jamie Murray 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 to love down. Then we kind of relaxed a bit and played really well in the last couple of sets.’
A crowd of over 6,000 was at the Emirates Arena, arriving with the expectation that they would see off the Uzbek pair. Although Istomin is a high-class singles player, he rarely plays doubles and the duo’s aggregate world ranking is 920 between them.
Murray and Inglot have built up quite a pedigree individually, the Scot’s most recent success being winning another US Open mixed doubles title while Inglot made the semi-finals at Wimbledon this year.
However, they have not always gelled as a partnership in the Davis Cup and were not a cohesive team when paired for this year’s World Group first-round match against Spain back in February, when Inglot in particular had endured a day to forget.
They picked up largely where they left off in Marbella, not exactly seeming to fill each other with confidence.
The quality of Istomin’s returns was an immediate problem, and his piercing replies soon brought trouble, sending one down the line to break the Murray serve for 2-1 in the opening set.
The British duo had opportunities to level, twice forcing break points against the more vulnerable return of Faziev. But in a recurring theme they struggled with their own returns when it mattered and the Uzbeks held on for 6-4.
A certain shakiness had set in and
at the start of the second it was Inglot whose thumping serve was in peril before he rescued it from 15-40.
No team could keep their serve from being in danger, but it was the home pair creating more chances, which they simply could not convert. Murray’s body language began to take on a tortured look after both he and his partner failed to get their returns in when it most mattered on break points.
The tiebreak turned out to be a cliffhanger, in which they flirted with going two sets down. Having gone ahead 4-3 Inglot doublefaulted, but they worked their way to 6-4, the Uzbeks saving two set points and then a third at 7-6 with some quickfire volleys.
Trailing 7-8, Inglot hit two service winners to avert danger and then Istomin hit a forehand in the net to level the match.
Nerves were gradually settled, and the decisive game came in the third when they finally managed to secure a break of serve against Fayziev, going to 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.