GB WIPE OUT DUTCH FOR ANOTHER SHOT AT WORLD GROUP!

 

(Image taken from BBC)

 

Here we go again. Another Europe-Africa zone Group 1 promotion battle. This time out the opposition was the Netherlands. The Dutch arrived on court with 2 Unlimited playing in the background and with Richard Krychek now consigned to tennis history, this looked like a fairly straightforward tie. It was played at the Birmingham NEC which is not my idea of a sports arena but someone managed to get it to work with John Lloyd captaining our most promising Davis Cup squad for a while.

First up was Murray against Raemon Sluiter. The Dutchman got broken immediately in the first set which Andy put in the bank. Sluiter got his act together in the second set though and kept holding serve, untill Murray finally broke late on. At this point the Dutchman knew he was beaten and Murray went on to win 6-3 7-5 6-2. The Scotsman had got the opposition's attention and the pressure was on the Dutch for the second rubber.

Next up, Tim Henman made his Davis Cup comeback against Robin Haase. Supporting Tim is never easy at the best of times, there aren't that many players who can lose the opening game on his serve, then break back immediately before keeping steady to win a tie break 7-4. The second set was a more straightforward affair due to Henman breaking early. Haase broke early again in the third set but mistakes by the Dutchman gave the more experienced Henman a way back in, resulting in a another tie break which Heman won 7-4. 7-6 6-3 7-6 and Henman turned back the clock to give GB an awesome start to the tie.

For the doubles, enter a combo of Rusedski and Jamie Murray, Andy's older brother and our first quality doubles specialist for ages, up against a combo of Haase and Rogier Wassen. I certainly hope to see more of Jamie after this, the GB combo looking awsome as they banked the first set. However the Dutch broke serve early in the second set and surged to level the match. Both sides exchanged breaks in the third set before GB surged to regain the lead. The fourth set had neither side daring to break serve, GB winning the resulting tie break 7-5 and the match 6-1 3-6 6-3 7-6 and the tie was secured with only one set lost!

We still had to go through the motions for a couple of dead rubbers though and Jamie allowed the Dutch to gain some pride by being beaten 6-4 6-7(0-7) 2-6 by Haase before Henman went out for a quick run to beat Robin Sijsling to wrap up a 4-1 win. By this point Greg Rusedski announced his retirement from tennis. A bummer, the Canadian mercenary has given us plenty of memories dating back to the mid 90s but with the rise of the Murray brothers, he leaveswith British tennis still in decent shape.

And once again, we have the door to the World Group to unlock. Croatia are heading our way in September. Even without Rusedski though, they'd better be ready.

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