Britain forced to rely on emergency Ward
AtENNIs venue temporarily parked on the left field of a great baseball stadium will offer Great Britain the chance of their biggest Davis cup upset in nearly 30 years over the next three days.
the dramatic 8,000-capacity arena inside Petco Park, home of the san Diego Padres, was a factor in GB captain leon smith last night opting for greater experience when he handed londoner James Ward the key support role to Andy Murray.
Ward, the 26-year-old world No 175, was preferred as second singles player to teenager Kyle Edmund, while the Americans revealed that their No 1, John Isner, will be absent with an ankle injury.
Britain’s third highest ranked player is short of matches and could yet have to play a deciding fifth rubber if his side are to record what would be their first win at World Group level since 1986.
Murray will start off against world No 79 Donald Young, the talented left-hander who beat the Wimbledon champion on hard courts in 2011. the British No 1 will try to win with enough left in the tank to play doubles alongside colin Fleming, and is looking at a hard three-day shift.
Ward has only won once this season — an illustration of GB’s scant resources — but he does have a career win over world No 49 sam Querrey, if only on grass.
smith indicated it had been a late decision to include him. ‘Kyle has a bright future but James has played well on this court in the last few days,’ he said. ‘the surface seems to suit him and so do the match-ups.’
this contest has a particular historical resonance as it was the first match ever played in the competition, in 1900 at the longwood cricket club in Boston.
Back then nobody could have foreseen that it would one day become contested annually by 130 nations, with a structure so complicated in the lower levels that even tennis insiders struggle to understand it.
For so much of recent decades Britain have inhabited the complex zonal tiers, but now find themselves in the clear air of the simple World Group format, with 16 elite nations playing a straightforward knockout to determine the 2014 champions.
Jim courier’s presence as Us captain is a reminder of the days when America could put out a seriously heavyweight Davis cup team that would be sure to include two top 10 singles players.
the slide of the Us fortunes in the men’s game now sees GB arrive here with a realistic chance of making the last eight, far more so than in their last appearance at this level, which was away to Argentina in 2008.
the whole outcome is likely to depend on the doubles rubber, in which the home side can field world champions Bob and Mike Bryan.
they have established themselves as the best team in the world, but lost their last two matches in this competition and were beaten in the third round of the Australian open last week.
temporary clay courts are rarely satisfactory, and this firm and slippy version has been laid mainly to disrupt Murray. He is very touchy about changing surfaces, but in truth none of the players competing would call it their favourite.
As is so often the case, British fortunes will rest largely on Murray, and he deserves credit for going out of his way to do national service when several fellow top 10 players have opted to sit out the first round.