Day 22 - Memorable Match Andy vs Dmitry Tursunov

Andy got Team USA off to a great start in the Davis Cup final at the beginning of December in Portland, Oregon with a 6-4, 6-4, 6-2 victory over Russia’s Dmitry Tursunov.

In front of a raucous capacity crowd at the Memorial Coliseum, Andy fed off the crowd’s energy to produce an electric display and give the USA a crucial 1-0 lead in the tie. With the support of his team mates on the bench, Andy wowed the fans with his aggressive and fearless play, exacting sweet revenge over Tursunov to whom he had lost against in the Davis Cup semifinals last year, 17-15 in the fifth set.

James Blake went on to give the USA a 2-0 lead, securing a perfect opening day for Team USA.

Quotes

The crowd was amazing. I mean, that last game when they just stood up was probably one of the coolest moments of my career so far.

If there’s 12 and a half thousand people behind you and you feel like you can use them to help win a tennis match, you’d be stupid not to, right?

I thought the one thing that I knew going in is that Dmitry’s a pretty streaky player. He has some ups and downs in a match. So one of my biggest goals was to try to return well, so he was having to play every service game, so I’m giving myself a chance to give him a chance to play a bad game. I was able to do that. I was able to kind of keep the pressure on. Even the games I was losing on his serve, I felt I was making the returns that I was supposed to. I thought that if I did that, that I’d be okay. And so, you know, I don’t know if he had his best day, but I was making him hit a lot of shots.