It may have taken a trip behind the old Iron Curtain, and a match against a teenage Lithuanian ranked 521 in the world, for it to happen, but today, for the first time in 13 years, a British player other than Andy Murray, Tim Henman and Greg Rusedski won a live Davis Cup singles rubber, with a straight-sets victory for the debutant James Ward.
Such is the current position of Britain’s Davis Cup team, scuffling around in the third division of the competition against a nation that only has three players with world singles rankings, this is the kind of statistic that unfortunately has to be noted.
Apart from a shaky game when Ward was serving for the opening set, when he hit three double-faults on his first five set points before eventually taking it with his sixth, when he suddenly looked as unsteady as the vodka-drunk British stag parties spilling out of the bars in the old town of Vilnius, this was a decent performance from the son of a London taxi driver.
Thankfully, Ward, his captain John Lloyd and the rest of the British bench did not overdo the triumphalism at the Vitas Gerulaitis Tennis Centre, as this was a match that the world No 250 should have won.
Indeed, if Ward had lost to the 18-year-old Laurynas Grigelis, someone back home in London should have thought about burning a pile of GB tracksuits, racket bags and sweatbands on the top of Henman Hill, and the Lawn Tennis Association should have considered withdrawing the nation from the competition for an indefinite period.
Until Ward’s 6-4, 6-2, 6-4 victory, you had to spool all the way back to 1997, when Andrew Richardson won a match against Zimbabwe at Crystal Palace, for the last time that someone other than Murray, Henman and Rusedski had scored a live singles rubber.
The night before, Ward had woken up a couple of times, thinking about the afternoon ahead. As Murray decided against coming to the Baltic, and the second highest ranked British man, Alex Bogdanovic, was not chosen because of his dismal record when representing his country, it was Ward, the country’s No 3, who was Britain’s leading singles nomination.
On a fast indoor hard court, in front of a crowd that just about made it into four figures, the biggest difference between the two players was the quality of Ward’s serving, especially when he landed his first serve.
When Ward reached 5-4, 40-0 in the opening set, he had dropped just one point on his delivery all match, but he then had his mini-wobble. He struck three double-faults on set points, also failed to convert a couple of other set-points, and had to stave off his opponent’s first break point.
Even so, Ward steadied himself, served out the set, and from there it always looked as though he would give Britain a 1-0 lead in this tie in Group Two of the Euro-African Zone, the third division of the competition.
If Britain are beaten, they will have to play a relegation play-off against Ireland or Turkey in July, with the loser of that match dropping to the lowest level of the competition.
Dan Evans, who failed to win a set in his two appearances against Poland in Liverpool last September, played Ricardas Berankis, a former junior world No 1, in the second singles rubber.
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