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Andy Murray misses his grandfather’s funeral to play for Great Britain

Andy Murray will play today’s Davis Cup doubles match with his brother Jamie.

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The visiting Argentine squad was given a huge boost with Del Potro’s return to singles, as he defeated second-ranked Murray in the dramatic and pivotal opening match of the tie, being played at the Emirates Arena in Glasgow, on Friday, reports Efe.

Del Potro and Murray were back on court after an epic 5-hour, 7-minute opening singles on Friday, won by del Potro in five sets.

“It gave me good confidence, gave me that belief that I can play best-of-five set matches in an intense environment and get the win”, said the Yorkshireman.

After needing just 34 minutes to take the match into a deciding set, Del Potro struck midway through the fifth before serving out for one of his most important victories of an injury-hit career.

Murray and Del Potro are the countries’ top players, so would usually expect to play each other on Sunday.

A senior tennis source said that the situation “won’t affect Andy’s participation” in today’s match.

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.

Both players were battling fatigue but still managed to produce moments of genius with del Potro chasing down a smash to unleash a glorious forehand passing shot and break for a 4-3 lead.

“He’s a great champion, a great guy on tour”.

Kyle Edmund was beginning to make waves with his power game, had nearly stolen the rubber against David Goffin in the Davis Cup final in Belgium last November, and won both singles ties in the quarter-final against Serbia. The contest is best of five sets ran over five matches.

The big serve and forehand combination will earn Edmund plenty of points, while Pella’s weaker serve means he’s likely to be under pressure more on his own delivery – a study of his matches shows he face an above-average number of break points in his matches. “It’s not easy but I think we did a good job of getting out there and performing well and fighting as hard as we could, and we deserved the win in the end”.

Captain Daniel Orsanic explained: “I thought that it was the best doubles we could go with”. I will try to play aggressive all the time.

“I know how to beat Cilic, it’s going to be a tough match, he’s on his home turf and won in Cincinnati but I know how to play to beat him”, said Gasquet, looking ahead to Sunday’s reverse singles.

Thus, Great Britain stayed in contention in this interesting Davis Cup World Group semi-final tie after they lost both singles ties yesterday, cutting the Argentina’s lead to 2-1.

Del Potro returned to the tour in February after three wrist operations and has been taking his comeback slowly, choosing to miss the French Open for example.

They pushed again at the start of the third set but failed to convert two chances each on the Del Potro and Mayer serves.

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Two-time Olympic champion Andy will kick the tie off on Friday with a mouth-watering rubber against Juan Martin Del Potro, the man he beat in a four-set classic to win Rio gold.

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