THE PRESSURE IS ALL ON ANDY
Hewitt’s wind-up stokes Davis Cup semi-final
THE Great Britain and Australia teams spent yesterday engaged in traditional Ashes-style wind-ups ahead of the Davis Cup semi-final in Glasgow.
Lleyton Hewitt spoke of the pressure that will be faced by Andy Murray, who took a full five days off after his US Open exit and drove the 415 miles to Scotland from his Surrey home.
In turn, GB captain Leon Smith went out of his way to cloud his side’s selection issues, refusing to discount the possibility that Birmingham’s Dan Evans, not even named in the squad last week, could be fielded as a second singles player when the action gets underway tomorrow.
As suggested in Sportsmail two weeks ago, Evans was always under serious consideration and was pulled out of a Challenger level event in Turkey to join the squad on Tuesday night.
He has won 29 out of 33 matches at lower-tier events since Wimbledon, but his presence may simply be precautionary, after what turned out to be a false alarm over an ankle injury suffered in practice by Kyle Edmund. Smith was studiously ambivalent about Evans, whose ranking has shot up to around 250 from the nowhereland of the 700s.
‘He’s obviously had a good run, albeit at a lower level,’ said the captain. ‘It looks like he’s pretty sharp, moving well, but obviously it is one thing playing a $15,000 Futures event and playing semi-finals of Davis Cup. But winning is still good.’
The GB squad has to be whittled down to four for the draw today from the group of the two Murrays — Andy and Jamie — Evans, Edmund, James Ward and Dom Inglot.
Veteran scrapper Hewitt had earlier pointed to the burden on world No 3 Murray. ‘A lot of the pressure is obviously on Andy,’ he said. ‘ Whoever gets the opportunity against him on day one really has nothing to lose, while Andy pretty much has to win that match in a lot of ways.’
Murray responded: ‘ We can point fingers at one another and say that there’s pressure for certain individuals and none on the others, but they’ll be feeling the pressure as well and we’ll see who handles it better over the weekend.’
Of his post-US Open minibreak Murray said: ‘I’ve had a long summer, my body needs to rest and recover, hard courts aren’t a forgiving surface on the body.
‘I wanted to take some time off and freshen up before getting here, and see my family.’