And win 6-1 3-6 6-4 6-4. The Murrays are a national tennis treasure.

-- Edited by Spectator on Saturday 17th of September 2016 04:16:20 PM

What I can't understand is why Argentina played del Potro. Under the circumstances, that seems quite a risk. Ah, the decisions of captains. (Speaking of captains' decisions, CD, I don't see how the French press can slate Monfils for not being in Zadar, given that Yannick Noah said in an interview re: Monfils "I asked him to leave, a decision I took for the cohesion and state of mind of the group. It's a longstanding decision taken with respect to a player who's not ready to play." Interesting sense of how you promote cohesion.)

As for our captain, on reflection I agree with CD: there's no way Andy Murray would have been happy to stand by with the tie at 0-2. Which means that yes, Leon Smith, was (again) correct in his team selection.

Spectator wrote:

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What I can't understand is why Argentina played del Potro. Under the circumstances, that seems quite a risk. Ah, the decisions of captains. (Speaking of captains' decisions, CD, I don't see how the French press can slate Monfils for not being in Zadar, given that Yannick Noah said in an interview re: Monfils "I asked him to leave, a decision I took for the cohesion and state of mind of the group. It's a longstanding decision taken with respect to a player who's not ready to play." Interesting sense of how you promote cohesion.)

As for our captain, on reflection I agree with CD: there's no way Andy Murray would have been happy to stand by with the tie at 0-2. Which means that yes, Leon Smith, was (again) correct in his team selection.

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Yes, a lot of people on Twitter seemed to be assuming Andy wouldn't play today. Surely we know him better than that by now I always thought he would unless he woke up feeling virtually dead.

As for Orsanic, he clearly won the 'guess who the other captain is going to pick' poker game yesterday. I think he guessed Andy wasn't going to play today and picked del Po thinking they had a realistic chance of finishing off the tie today. Needless to say, it looks like a big mistake now he's played another 3 hours and they didn't get the third point.

Having said that, the bookies still give Argentina an 84% chance of winning the tie (and Croatia are the new favourites to win the whole thing!), but I imagine Russia were even heavier favourites to beat us before day 3 in 2013.

Some might argue, though, that Del Potro would have had to do some physical workout today (or else he'd have been stiff as a board) i.e. a couple of hours gentle exercise and some tennis practice, to keep sharp.

And that even mentally he wouldn't have had the day off, like one would at a Grand Slam, for instance, because he'd have been sitting courtside, practically living every point.

So he might as well have played the doubles which, aerobically, is nothing like singles.

Spectator wrote:

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Apparently Del Potro has said he's not playing tomorrow?

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Lordy, that doubles decision could turn out to truly and horribly ridiculous .....

Either that, or it's just him speaking out of exhaustion today, and he actually will play tomorrow (though frankly, given that he beat Andy Murray, which no one else could have done, he's certainly more than pulled his weight) But it certainly has set Twitter alight - not so much the UK press, curiously, but a lot of the European!

On another note, what a triumph for Belgium! They really are the little team that could. Fabulous win for Bemelmans and DeLoore against Melo and Soares.

The only way that Del Potro playing today made sense is if he knew he didn't have another decent singles match in him so thought that trying to finish the tie in the doubles (which is clearly less physically demanding) was the better option.