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Dan Evans withstood a spirited challenge from lowly-ranked Eero Vasa to give Great Britain a winning start to their Davis Cup tie against Finland in Manchester.
It was a landmark match for Evans, who by playing in his 26th tie in the competition surpassed Andy Murray to claim joint second place in the British standings alongside Mike Sangster and behind only Bobby Wilson.
He would not have been a bigger favourite in any of his previous 37 rubbers, but Vasa played well above his standing of world number 703 before Evans ground out a 7-6 (3) 6-2 victory at the AO Arena.
“It was difficult match, he played great at the start,” said Evans. “I knew he was going to come out and play very aggressive. I found it a little tough for quite a long time to get the ball striking. I started to play a bit better in the second.”
It was a crucial victory for the hosts, with captain Leon Smith opting to give US Open semi-finalist Jack Draper extra rest ahead of much tougher-looking ties against Argentina and Canada later this week.
The 22-year-old only arrived in Manchester on Tuesday afternoon, four days after losing to world number one Jannik Sinner in New York.
Smith instead handed a debut to Billy Harris, who is currently ranked significantly higher than Evans and therefore had to play as the number one and take on Finland’s leading player this week, Otto Virtanen.
Finland were surprise semi-finalists last year but were dealt a major blow by the absence through injury of their number one, Emil Ruusuvuori.
Vasa’s Davis Cup resume includes defeats to players from Madagascar and Zimbabwe, but he impressed in the opening set, backing up a pacy serve with solid groundstrokes.
Evans looked increasingly frustrated as Vasa held firm all the way to a tie-break, but there the British veteran showed his class.
It has been a tough 12 months for Evans since he starred in Britain’s dramatic group victory here last year, with injury and poor form resulting in his ranking dropping to 178.
But he arrived Manchester with confidence high after an encouraging run to the third round of the US Open and eased away through the second set to claim victory after an hour and 38 minutes.
