Fleming's inclusion adds Scottish flavour to Britain's Davis Cup tie

Published on Thursday 5 March 2009 21:53

ANDY and Jamie Murray may be absent, but Colin Fleming will represent Scotland at Braehead this weekend after being called into Great Britain's Davis Cup to take on Ukraine.

Fleming, the only Scot in the squad of five, will make his debut in the competition tomorrow, when he and Ross Hutchins take on Ukraine's Sergiy Stakovsky and Sergei Bubka in the doubles rubber. Ranked 585th in the world but 11th in Britain, the 24-year-old from Linlithgow was called into the squad last week as a back-up following fears over Andy Murray's fitness.

John Lloyd, the British team captain, included Fleming in his line-up yesterday after telling his players over dinner on Wednesday night. Josh Goodall and Chris Eaton will play the singles matches today and on Sunday, and James Ward is the man to miss out from the quintet who travelled to Glasgow.

Goodall, at world No192 the highest-ranked Briton in the absence of the younger Murray brother, will play the first singles rubber today against Ilya Marchenko. It will be the first time the pair have met, but, with Marchenko ranked below Goodall at No224, the Englishman is expected to get the home team off to a winning start.

That match will be followed by a far tougher task – Eaton's contest with Stakovsky, the Ukrainian No1. "I played him a good six months ago – three tie-break sets, 8-6 in the third," Eaton said, recalling a two-sets-to-one defeat by Stakovsky in Metz last September. "It was one of those matches – one point here or there. I think he hit a net-cord pass on one of my match points. So those sort of matches can go either way."

Even so, as Eaton's ranking of 383 is well below Stakovsky's 125, the Ukrainian will be a firm favourite to win the rubber, and Lloyd will surely not be too displeased if the first day ends all square. If that happens, it will then be up to Hutchins and Fleming, both of them doubles specialists, to give the home team the edge on day two. That would still leave the British team needing a point from Sunday's singles matches, which will be the reverse of Friday's rubbers, with Goodall again first up against Stakovsky.

This is not a do-or-die clash in terms of the competition. The winners will go ahead to a play-off for promotion to the elite World Group, but the losers will have another chance to preserve their status in Euro-Africa Zone Group One; they will face a relegation play-off.

In that sense, and given the fact that every man in the British team bar Hutchins will be making his Davis Cup debut, it may seem that the home squad have nothing to lose. Asked if he believed that to be the case, however, Lloyd said he would not tolerate any such attitude.

"I don't like that phrase: I think it's a cop-out," he said. "I don't believe in that at all. I don't think that's a good message. You've got a match to lose, so you have got something to lose. That's the way I look at it. You go forward with guns blazing. Don't come off and say, 'I had nothing to lose'."

Lloyd's sentiments were echoed by Goodall, the leading singles player in Murray's absence. "We've been called in to do a job and we're going to do our best to try to do it," he said. "We haven't come here just to make up the numbers."

Lloyd explained that he had delayed naming the side "to keep everybody on their toes". He confirmed that last week's play-offs for places in the team – which saw Eaton beat Ward in a match lasting almost seven hours – had swayed his decision.

"The play-offs were huge," said Lloyd, who devised the system after becoming fed up with under-achievement. "If the result had been different, James would have had a very good shot there. But Chris got the victory. James was very disappointed – which is what we want to see. His time will come."

Lloyd is confident the six-man play-offs he and team coach Paul Annacone devised will pay dividends this weekend. "Only two out of the six had ever played best-of-five, and I don't think any of them had ever played five sets in a singles," he said.

"That was, to me, a way of getting the experience in there in terms of sets and matches and under those circumstances. The guys who won their matches played pressure tennis, and their fifth sets were the best sets they played throughout the week – which to me showed they've got that kind of mentality."

If they display that mentality against Ukraine, the British can pull off an improbable victory.