Leon Smith is anticipating a extremely motivated Switzerland on the opposite aspect of the web as Great Britain attempt to preserve their Davis Cup momentum in Manchester on Friday.
Britain started their marketing campaign at a packed AO Arena on Wednesday with a 2-1 upset victory over final 12 months’s runners-up Australia.
That gave them an incredible probability of righting the wrongs of final 12 months, once they had been eradicated after solely two matches of the group stage in Glasgow, and progressing to finals week in Malaga in November however there’s nonetheless numerous work to do.
Switzerland, led by three-time grand slam champion Stan Wawrinka, are already within the last-chance saloon having misplaced 3-0 to France of their opener on Tuesday.
“This is just the start, that’s what we talked about,” stated captain Smith after watching debutant Jack Draper and Dan Evans pull off spectacular wins towards Thanasi Kokkinakis and Alex De Minaur, respectively.
“We’ve got a massive match on Friday against Switzerland, who obviously lost 3-0 so they’re going to have to come out and do something.
“They’re going to have high motivation and they’ll be playing with a crowd this time, which obviously Stan wasn’t happy with the other day.”
Wawrinka took to social media to voice his dissatisfaction with the small turnout for his or her assembly towards France however an identical crowd to Wednesday’s 9,290 is predicted on Friday.
Given their performances towards Australia, Evans and Draper are the front-runners to maintain their singles spots forward of top-ranked Cameron Norrie and Andy Murray, however Smith might but spring one other shock.
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Evans had a robust file towards De Minaur however has misplaced all 5 conferences with Wawrinka, whereas Swiss quantity two Dominic Stricker beat fellow 21-year-old Draper eventually 12 months’s Next Gen ATP Finals of their solely earlier match.
Smith welcomes the dilemma, although, including: “People keep saying you’ve got really difficult selections – well, I’d rather that way to what it was many moons ago.
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“I think it’s great, I think it’s testament to all the guys that everyone’s playing at the top of their game.
“We’ve got to weigh everything up because people have played a lot of tennis as well, potentially look at match-ups, but we discuss it as a group and ultimately we’ll make a call on it.”
Draper has managed solely 10 tournaments this season due to a succession of accidents, the newest of which to his left shoulder noticed him retire on the French Open after which miss Wimbledon, dropping him out of the highest 100.
But time on the sidelines has not affected the Londoner’s capability to seem like a top-10 participant within the making and a run to the fourth-round of the US Open was his finest but at a grand slam.
“It’s been an incredibly challenging year for me,” he stated. “I started the year at 38 in the world, everything was going great, and then just got hit by a load of injuries really. Maybe a few mistakes that I’ll learn from and stuff I could have done better.
“The one before Wimbledon was a real blow, I couldn’t play for a month or two, I spent loads of time in a bit of a rut trying to get out of it.
“I worked really hard to get myself back, I knew my time would come again because my tennis has always been there.
“New York was a massive boost for me, I needed it. Then coming here I’ve been really confident.
“It’s all coming together so hopefully I can just keep on going to the end of the season and finish really strong.”
