At the end of a bruising, difficult week that did not play out as they had hoped, Great Britain emerged for the final day of Davis Cup competition in Manchester with just one possible path remaining for them to reach the next stage of the event: they needed to win all three matches against Canada, the strongest team in the group.
While this may have been a realistic possibility on paper, the reality played out as a painful anticlimax. Great Britain was knocked out of contention at the very first hurdle following an excellent performance from Denis Shapovalov, who dismantled Dan Evans 6-0, 7-5 in the opening encounter.
