Wimbledon.com's highlights from Day 1 at Queen's Club for the Davis Cup contest between Great Britain and France...
A sea of red, blue and white transformed the Queen’s Club into a unique Davis Cup arena.
Great Britain is bidding to reach the Davis Cup semi-finals for the first time since 1981. Standing in their way is a talent rich French squad who had a plethora of options to bring to west London.
History does not stand in favour of Leon Smith’s side, who have failed to beat last year’s finalists for 37 years and suffered a whitewash 5-0 at the hands of Guy Forget and Henri Leconte the last time they faced off at Queen’s Club.
Captain Arnaud Clement is attempting to guide France to a sixth consecutive season in the quarter-finals and first up was the wily world No.11 Gilles Simon up against James Ward.
Despite Ward’s heroics in the previous round, surging back to beat John Isner 15-13 in the fifth set of a marathon battle, the world No.89 certainly had a tough task to topple the underrated Simon.
Having reached the semi-finals last month during the Aegon Championships at Queen’s Club, Simon continued his form to make the final eight at Wimbledon where he eventually lost to Roger Federer.
Buoyed by the vocal home crowd, Ward had a chance to open up a 2-0 lead but once Simon settled, he was unrelenting with cunning switches of spin and direction to tease the errors out of the Londoner.
At 2-2 Simon secured the crucial break following a wayward Ward smash and that sparked the ardent French fans into full voice.
Ward was erratic off both wings and couldn’t make head way on the pin point accuracy of Simon’s serve to fall to an opening set 6-4.
The silky soft hands of Simon were causing all sorts of problems for Ward, who was mainly stranded at the back of the court.
A succession of errors and passive chipped forehands enabled Simon a break to lead 2-1 and he cantered to claiming the second set 6-4.
Unfortunately for the British fans, Ward was broken in the opening game of set three courtesy of some ferocious forehands from the free swinging Simon.
The Frenchman clearly noticed his opponent was deflated and he pounced to breeze through the final set 6-1 and head back to the club house in under two hours.
"It was a great match for me. I got lucky to have an early break in each set. It was not easy. There's a lot of wind," said Simon.
Advantage Les Bleus!
Murray proves his grit
Back out onto Centre Court just a month after his fourth triumph in the Aegon Championships and Andy Murray was once again resurrecting British hopes.
The Scot faced Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, who he had a 10-2 favourable record with until today’s rubber, which includes two three set victories at Queen’s on the grass.
Murray has never lost a singles Davis Cup rubber on grass in five matches and set the tone early on with a whipped passing forehand down the line in game three.
As the first set rattled on, both players struggled with their footing and failed to impose themselves on the return. At 5-4 Murray called on the crowd’s support and earnt a break point by rushing Tsonga into a forehand.
The world No.12 served his way out of trouble and held on for 5-5, skipping back to the chair as the boisterous French support reached a new volume.
Tsonga hauled himself to deuce on Murray’s next service game, attacking the net and punishing a meagre 76mph second serve by the two-time Grand Slam champion.
This time it was Murray who found the required serves to nose ahead 6-5. Out of the blue the 28-year-old fired a rasping backhand down the line to force two set points.
Tsonga tried a serve and volley to surprise Murray, but he dipped a delightful return to the Frenchman’s shoelaces to grasp the first set 7-5 and catapulted into the air in a roar of celebration.
Cue delirious scenes around the centre court. However they were short lived as some uncharacteristic errors gifted Tsonga a break for 1-0 but from 3-1 down Murray rallied and his counterpunching coupled with heavy returns teased the errors out of his Gaelic opponent.
Back on serve and the set rolled into an enthralling tie-break. Tsonga edged 2-0 up with a sublime serve and volley but once again Murray found the corners to drag the Frenchman around the court for 4-4.
Brutal serving from both kept cancelling out set points until Murray latched onto a 137mph serve at 11-10 which lobbed over Tsonga, who sprayed his forehand long to send the home crowd into raptures.
Two sets up and Murray was on the charge. Having taken a medical time out to massage his leg and shoulder, Tsonga was failing to keep a pace with Murray’s barrage of shots and handed an instant break with a double fault.
Half-hearted forays to the net were picked off by the Scot who kept his composure to win the third set with consummate ease 6-2 and level the tie for Great Britain.
“I’m happy with the job I did today and played a decent match, the atmosphere definitely helped. If I was playing in a half full stadium I maybe could have lost that second set but the crowd was great, especially in the important moments. I’ve never played in an atmosphere like that here during Queen’s,” said Murray.
“I played some good tennis at important times in extremely tough conditions because the wind was swirling around courtside.”
Great Britain captain Leon Smith was delighted with Murray’s performance and now faces the difficult decision whether to play Andy in the doubles tomorrow, which he shall make after a team discussion this evening.
“You have to be inspired with what Andy put out on the court today. Particularly the tie-break, it was nails from Andy to get through that,” added Smith. “Everybody in the locker room has a lift now and it’s more buoyant.”
Murray has delivered again.
