Great Britain sits one win away from clinching a Davis Cup qualifying tie after Toby Samuel and Arthur Fery won singles on Saturday at a sold-out Copper Box Arena, giving the hosts a 2-0 lead against Ecuador.
Samuel, making his Davis Cup debut after Cameron Norrie withdrew with an arm injury, recovered from a set down to beat Andrés Andrade 4-6 6-4 6-1. The 24-year-old has climbed from outside the world’s top 250 to 95th in the past nine months and described the occasion as unexpectedly powerful. "It's a completely new experience for me playing Davis Cup and it definitely caught me off guard how much it meant to me going out there for my first time," he said. He added in his on-court interview, "This was a big dream of mine and you could sort of tell because I got a bit nervous at the start, but I got myself going and I am so happy I got the job done for Great Britain."
Samuel began slowly as Andrade, ranked 203rd, raced to a 4-0 lead and closed the opening set 6-4. The British debutant steadied in the second set and dominated the decider, dropping only one game in a final set that lasted 28 minutes.
Fery, appearing for Britain at home for the first time since a deep Wimbledon run and a Winston-Salem final, followed by defeating Álvaro Guillén Meza 7-5 6-0. The British number one, currently 36th in the world, was tested in a tight opening set before sweeping eight games in a row to rout the world number 293 in the second.
With the tie best of five, Henry Patten and Neal Skupski are scheduled to play doubles at 12:00 BST on Sunday and can finish the job for the hosts. Should that pair fail to secure victory, Samuel and Fery would return for the reverse singles, with qualification for the Davis Cup Finals at stake.
Qualification carries a clear prize: the seven winners from this weekend’s qualifiers will join three-time defending champions Italy in the Davis Cup Finals in Bologna from 24 to 29 November. Elsewhere in qualifying on Saturday, Austria and South Korea progressed to the quarter-finals, the United States lead the Czech Republic 2-1, and Canada hold a 2-0 advantage over France.
