As we were driving home after the match we decided to have a lie in before heading to the arena.
We packed up all our things and loaded them into the car and got ready to walk across. The weather put an end to that plan as it started raining heavily, so instead we drove the car across and parked in the arena parking!
We had another look around the shops and grabbed some lunch and then headed into the arena.
We arrived to find James Ward practicing on the court with Dan Evans.
Unfortunately we still had to endure the dreadful violins....why oh why the organisers thought we would want to see the exact same act three days in a row is beyond me!
Finally though the players were introduced....Andy Murray vs Gilles Muller.
This match was expected to be quite tough, Muller had pushed Nadal at Wimbledon a couple of weeks earlier so was to be no pushover.
Andy was really trying hard and missed a couple of opportunities to break which he was visibly annoyed at. He got the break though and wrapped up the first set.
Andy was really piling on the pressure, he was barely sitting down at changeovers and taking little time in between serves.
The am.commers today finally used their letters to spell out some inspiring messages - not sure what they said as we were over to the side of the group but we got a picture of them in the process!
I noticed during this match that Ross Hutchins seems to be the troublemaker of the GB team - he was seemingly constantly teasing the other players and generally being mischevious.
After winning the first set Andy took control of the match and won the second 6-3, he then powered through the third racing to a 5-0 lead. Muller managed to hold his last service game though and Andy came through 6-1 in the third!
He was clearly thrilled to get the win and leapt into the air with joy.
If anyone had ever doubted what it means to Andy to play for his country they were proved wrong after this match. He was extremely emotional in the on-court interview and broke down whilst trying to explain what it meant to him to play the tie so close to home!
So, the tie was now won and GB would get to play a promotion tie in September against Hungary (location tbd). As Andy had won quite quickly we stayed to see how James Ward would do in the dead rubber.
He was playing Mike Vermeer who had been nicknamed the Milky Bar kid by the students from Stirling Uni.
James was broken in his first service game, but managed to break straight back and promptly won the first set 6-1. Jamie Murray had deputised for Leon as captain for the first half of the set and must have been impressed by his promising start as captain!
The second set was more competitive but James took it 6-3 to give GB a 4-1 win in the tie!
Rob and I then left quickly (and didn't get the chance to say goodbye) as we had a long drive back home and wanted to get going.
Several hours later and we walked in the door at about 11.30pm.
All in all we had a really fun weekend, it was great to meet up with the am.commers again. We probably won't make the tie in September as we are going on holiday the week after, but when the venue is announced we will see what we can do!
I have only included a selection of my photos - the rest are on photobucket and can be viewed here:
Davis Cup Photos
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