It also justified captain Daniel Orsanic’s decision to rest 27-year-old del Potro who had played for eight hours in winning a five-hour marathon singles rubber over Andy Murray on Friday before losing Saturday’s doubles alongside Mayer against the Murray brothers.
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It was thus left to Leonardo Mayer to complete the job for the South Americans after replacing Juan Martin Del Potro.
Argentina captain Daniel Orsanic made the incredibly risky decision to play star man Juan Martin del Potro in the doubles and that looked likely to backfire when the 2009 US Open victor, still working his way back to peak fitness after an bad two-year spell with injuries, was replaced by Mayer for the pivotal fifth match.
Evans had 30-30 on the Mayer serve in that very first game then had the break of serve, the Argentine appearing ill at ease in his first experience of a deciding rubber.
Argentina will now face Croatia in the final in November.
In the end, it was not a situation Argentina were made to regret as Mayer, a player ranked a lowly 114, produced a powerful and impressive performance to send his country through to a final clash with Croatia in November. That was worrying for me but I managed to get it done in straight sets thankfully. While that was in fact Evans’ last singles win in this competition, he was in decent nick, having pushed eventual US Open victor Stan Wawrinka as hard as anyone at Flushing Meadows earlier this month.
It gives defending champions Great Britain hope of pulling off a repeat of their win over Russian Federation in Coventry in April 2013 when they also came back from 2-0 down to win the tie 3-2.
“I’m surprised but it’s understandable”, he said.
But the biggest reason to think that Britain could win another Davis Cup title is that Andy Murray has continued his development since the return of Ivan Lendl.
Britain, who won the Davis Cup for the first time in 79 years 12 months ago, must wait for Wednesday’s draw to see which nation they will face in the 2017 first round in February.
“We have always been playing well in Davis Cup. I haven’t been able to play because of (shoulder) injury so I am delighted to be back on form”, Mayer said.
Argentina led 2-0 after the opening round of singles matches, but now find themselves having to win the final match to progress to the tournament final. Obviously I was in control of the match, but I then broke serve.
Orsanic had been criticised for playing Del Potro in doubles, but he explained: ” Juan Martin gave more than he had (against Murray) and that had a very high cost for us.
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He added, “I knew I was going to be in some pain this weekend and I spoke to my team about that it was going to be really hard”.
