Cameron Norrie sealed victory in Great Britain’s Davis Cup Finals opener against France as he beat Arthur Rinderknech in straight sets.
Earlier, Dan Evans had given Team GB the perfect start by beating France’s No 2 Adrian Mannarino to give Norrie the chance to make it 2-0 with only one match to go, an unassailable lead even if Rinderknech and Nicolas Mahut did pull one back for the French.
Team GB will now face Czech Republic on Sunday knowing victory will earn them a place in the quarter-finals on Tuesday, potentially against Novak Djokovic’s Serbia at stake.
“It’s tough because the conditions on the courts are quite slow and the ball is moving through the air slowly,” said captain Leon Smith, who admitted that playing matches on back-to-back days would be a challenge when it comes to recovery.
GB vs France (2-1)
- Dan Evans beats Adrian Mannarino 7-5 6-4
- Cameron Norrie beats Arthur Rinderknech 6-2 7-6 (10-8)
- Arthur Rinderknech/Nicolas Mahut beat Joe Salisbury/Neal Skupski 6-1 6-4
Group C standings
- 1. Great Britain – 1 point (Percentage of matches won: 66 per cent)
- 2. France – 1 point (50 per cent)
- 3. Czech Republic – 0 points (33 per cent)
Great Britain due to play Czech Republic at 9am GMT on Sunday 28 November
“It’s going to be another battle but it feels a darn sight better going in with a victory.”
Norrie, playing in the Davis Cup as British No 1 for the first time, showed some signs of nerves against Rinderknech but overcame them quickly to close out the match 6-2 7-6 and make it four sets out of four for the team.
The environment, behind closed Austrian doors, may have been unfamiliar, but the opponent was not; Rinderknech was on Davis Cup debut but Norrie first played him as long ago as 2015, when both men were at college in Texas. (Norrie was at Texas Christian University, Rinderknech was at Texas A&M.)
In his student days, Norrie was a national No 1 in the US and beat Rinderknech comfortably in both their undergraduate meetings, although their only previous clash as professionals went the distance early this year.
Rinderknech had opportunities to make this a three-set match too, despite being broken twice in a 45-minute opening set that Norrie largely dominated.
Having broken the Frenchman’s big serve in the first set twice though, he could not do so again and a tie-break was required to separate them.
Rinderknech led it 4-1 at one point only for Norrie’s fine return of his enormous serve and rally resistance to prove telling. He did save one match point at 5-6, and served for the set at 8-7, only for Norrie to make a sensational backhand pass on the run. He won the next two points too to seal victory and, in his words, “sneak through”.
In the morning, Evans had come into his tie with a 2-1 head-to-head lead over the left-hander and the favourite’s tag, but with the spectre of defeat at Queen’s in 2018 and a tricky, four-set win over the Frenchman at the US Open in 2019 in the back of his mind.
And there were plenty of mental games going on in the first set as Evans traded sliced backhands with Mannarino’s top-spin forehand, with neither player offering much in the power department but plenty in skill.
The British No 2 spurned his first five break points of the match as Mannarino repeatedly found big serves at big moments, but at 3-3 Evans finally had his break through with a superb return of serve to seal it.
However, he undid much of that good work with what he called “an awful game” while serving for the opening set, broken to love to bring it back to 5-5.
That rollercoaster continued though as Evans broke Mannarino once again with three brilliant forehands, the final one on the run, down the line, into the corner to make it 6-5 and he subsequently held to love with more than an hour gone.
He said afterwards that he was motivated by the desire to “set it up” for Cameron Norrie to finish off the tie and he was certainly more clinical in the second set. Having been two from nine on break point opportunities in the opener, he claimed his 10th chance of the match at 4-4, although he was rather gifted the break when Mannarino netted a simple volley.
Nevertheless, he had to serve it out better than his first effort in the opening set and duly did so with a more positive, aggressive strategy, finding at ace at 30-0 before closing the match out at the first time of asking and give captain Leon Smith on his bench the exact start he wanted.
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