Great Britain will still need to win both if they are to successfully defend their title, but Andy Murray will take confidence and hope that Del Potro tires in a potential decider with Kyle Edmund.
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Juan Martin opened the second set with a love service game, which was the best possible thing for them after such a one-sided first set, and it went from good to better when they broke Andy in the second game to take an early lead.
Having trailed 0-2 after the opening day of this semifinal against Del Potro’s Argentina, Andy and Jamie Murray needed to win Saturday’s doubles rubber to avoid elimination, but having done that, it still leaves Sunday’s singles rubbers.
British No 1 Murray contested the longest match of his career against the hard-hitting Del Potro, who he defeated in a similarly epic Olympic gold medal match last month.
So with team captain Leon Smith choosing to leave the other doubles specialist Dom Inglot out of his final four, Andy Murray had little choice but to drag himself back on court today.
But Del Potro can’t be in the best physical shape as, rather than resting after Friday’s adventures, he chose to play in Saturday’s doubles match, which meant he was out on the match court for a further three hours. ‘He played unbelievable the whole match’. “I want to play for more years, not just for more match”.
He added: “We did a good job of getting out there and performing well and fighting as hard as we could”.
“We can’t win everything”.
“Andy returned awesome. We’re back in the tie”. It gives Great Britain hope of pulling off a repeat of their win over Russian Federation in April 2013 when they came back from 2-0 down to win the tie 3-2. Jamie played unbelievably well. “We went for it to intend to close out the tie”, coach Daniel Orsanic said. “I think we did really well, we had our chances but we couldn’t win”.
“Yesterday was a very tough day”.
The main question mark going into the second day was whether Andy would deem himself fit enough to play having been unsure how he would pull up.
“I’ll have to see how I feel when I wake up in the morning”, said Murray.
He will now have to decide whether Edmund or Evans takes on the resurgent del Potro on Sunday, though the Argentine also looked spent after eight hours on court in two days. “This is very important to me and my team and we are looking to reach another final in the Davis Cup”, Del Potro said courtside.
Del Potro had been expected to be rested in preparation for the final singles match – which could well turn out to be the deciding rubber – but he was thrust into the action and he and Mayer got off to a very sluggish start. Edmund, who was the hero of Team GB’s quarterfinal upset of Serbia in Belgrade, or Dan Evans, who does not possess the power of Edmund, but is a quicker player with a more versatile game?
The Argentine pair roared back in impressive fashion in the second set and the Glasgow crowd braced themselves for another lengthy five-set thriller.
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He has dipped and soared since, reaching No1 in doubles rankings last year, two years after contemplating early retirement, and here he hit a peak of excellence that lifted his exhausted brother in the closing stages.
