Novak Djokovic ended Great Britain’s Davis Cup hopes with a singles win over Cameron Norrie to put Serbia out of reach in their quarter-final.
Norrie faced a mountain to climb with teammate Jack Draper having already lost the opening singles to Miomir Kecmanovic. It left the British No1 attempting to beat the world No1, currently playing some of the best tennis of his career, for the first time.
And Djokovic duly picked up where he left off dominating at the ATP Finals as he essentially toyed with Norrie for much of a 6-4, 6-4 victory.
Britain’s leading player had predicted he would need to run all night and so it proved. Despite his court coverage, the gulf in class was just too big between the two players.
Norrie went an early break behind in both sets. In the opening set, he did well to avoid a double break but getting back on level terms from the solitary break already looked insurmountable. The second set was a mirror image.
His one advantage was the lion’s share of the crowd support, thousands having travelled to cheer on a British contingent missing the injured Andy Murray and Dan Evans, the latter of whom was watching from the stands.
But Djokovic even used that for his purposes, cupping his ear and blowing sarcastic kisses to the litany of fans as he silenced them at the end of the first set.
Slim hopes of an unlikely comeback were erased as early as the opening game of the second set as Norrie was immediately broken to love.
He has been in a slump of late but, in truth, he didn’t play badly. It’s just Djokovic’s level of tennis currently is on a different plane to the rest of the world. In the first set for example, he dropped just three points on serve.
Djokovic, who has not lost a Davis Cup match in 12 years, reacted angrily to one fan he labelled disrespectful saying, "no you shut up, no you be quiet".
Norrie and the rest of the British team knew chances were already limited from the moment Draper lost 7-6, 7-6 in the opening rubber.
This was only Draper’s second ever Davis Cup match in what has been an injury-ravaged season, and the lack of experience showed at points.
He got off to a near perfect start with three aces in his opening service game but perpetually felt like he was on the verge of being broken as the set dragged on.
Kecmanovic earned the first break points – two of them – in game eight but he saved them both.
There were two more break points against him in his very next service game when a backhand down the line by his opponent clipped the net and made its way past Draper’s clutches.
A lovely drop shot cancelled that break point out and Draper saved another, the 21-year-old proving incredibly cool on the pressure points.
Having done so well to take the opening set to a tiebreak, he squandered it with two double faults from which he never recovered.
The second set was even more closely matched but, seeing his opportunities to break running out, Draper whipped the crowd into a frenzy in game nine, somehow willing them to give him an additional lift.
It worked to an extent but his level of inconsistency came to the fore again in the second tiebreak. Having earned a mini break for a 2-0 lead, he then lost the next five points in a row.
He denied one match point but couldn’t the second as Kecmanovic took a deserving win to give Serbia lead, which never looked likely to be erased come match two.
