Britain reached the Davis Cup final for the first time in 37 years yesterday as Andy Murray outclassed Australia’s Bernard Tomic in straight sets to give his side an unbeatable 3-1 lead.
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Britain’s Andy Murray celebrates winning his match against… Murray defeated Bernard Tomic to give Great Britain an unassailable 3-1 lead with Great Britain leading 2-1 before the start of third days play.
“I did at the age of 19 get to 27 in the world, which was very good, and now I’m finally a top-20 player”. Andy’s brother Jamie contributed enormously to the semi-final win over Australia at the weekend after they paired up to defeat Sam Groth and Lleyton Hewitt in the doubles rubber. “Davis Cup is like this, and I love playing in Davis Cup“.
However Murray chooses to approach the next few weeks, it won’t change what has already been a remarkable run of success since a Great Britain team deprived of his talents secured their Europe/Africa Zone Group II status with a win over Turkey five years ago, shortly after Smith’s appointment as captain. He’s a world class doubles player and proved it in the five set Saturday afternoon nerve-shredder that was the decisive rubber in the semi-final against Australia that everybody expected it to be.
Now Murray has barely two months to ensure he is fully fit to help Britain win the Davis Cup for the first time since 1936.
Andy Murray’s brilliance clearly holds the key to a British cup win and the challenge facing them will be posed by Belgium, who will have home advantage in the final.
But a band of brothers bond with this GB squad, and an appreciation that by winning this competition he would complete a holy trinity of Olympics, Wimbledon and Davis Cup that only Rafa Nadal has achieved before him, has lit a fire for Murray.
“The previous issues I’ve had with my back have been completely different”.
“The O2 would obviously be a question mark for me if we were playing on the clay”.
Chris Kermode, the executive chairman and president of the ATP, who has had a good relationship with Murray ever since he ran the Aegon Championships at Queen’s Club, stressed last night all players who qualify for London are required to play there. “We did everything we could have done”, Hewitt said.
Questioning what he called Kyrgios’s “look at me” attitude, Newcombe, the seven-time grand slam victor , also warned the youngster he is at “a very serious crossroads”.
“These boys are going to get a lot more opportunities and they will be better players because of what happened this weekend”.
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Federer arrived in Lille exhausted and nursing a back injury that meant he had to withdraw from the ATP Tour finals title decider against Novak Djokovic. On Tuesday night, once I had finished practising and had cooled down, my back was extremely sore and it got progressively worse over the next couple of days.
