Andy Murray joined his big brother Jamie on the doubles court and produced a 6-3, 6-2, 6-4 defeat of Yoshihito Nishioka and Yasutaka Uchiyama to put holders Britain into 2-1 command over Japan in their Davis Cup World Group first-round tie yesterday.
Italy became the first team to qualify for the quarter-finals with a 3-0 sweep of Switzerland which was missing Roger Federer and Stan Wawrinka in Pesaro.
Simone Bolelli and Andreas Seppi combined to hammer Marco Chiudinelli and Henri Laaksonen 6-3, 6-1, 6-3 and will play either Argentina or Poland.
The Murray brothers rolled over the Japanese minnows after the team chose to sit out Asia’s top player Kei Nishikori, likely with an eye to keeping him fresh for reverse singles.
The tie is only the second between the two nations, with the last being played in 1931 when the Brits swept 5-0 on grass.
Murray, playing for the first time in five weeks since the birth of his daughter, extended his Davis win streak in singles and doubles to 13 straight matches.
In Melbourne, the Bryan twins unleashed their firepower for a 2-1 US lead over Australia as Lleyton Hewitt came off the captain’s bench for the hosts.
Bob and Mike Bryan defeated Hewitt and 27-year-old Davis debutant John Peers 6-3, 6-3, 4-6, 4-6, 6-3 in two-and-a-half hours on grass.
Hewitt, 35, came out of a five-week retirement to replace Sam Groth, but the gesture was too little, too late.
It took the Aussie nine tries to finally break the Bryans, with the success coming in the seventh game of the third set.
After trailing two sets to love, the Hewitt-Peers team began to jell, with the pair running off two consecutive winning sets to push the match into a deciding fifth.
The Americans broke in the second game of the final set, running to a 5-2 margin before finally closing out the victory after the Australians saved a pair of match points in the penultimate game.
“The level was incredible on both sides of the net,” US captain Jim Courier said. “Grass court doubles can sometimes be a little bit messy because it’s so quick, tough to return.
“But the level from first ball was extremely high and obviously it got very complicated there after the second set. Bob and Mike lifted in the fifth set and really put a stamp on it early.” The 32-time champion US are hoping to avoid a first-round loss for a third consecutive season.
Hewitt’s appearance on court as captain was all but unprecedented for the tennis powerhouse nation, which has had only seven Davis Cup captains in more than a century of play.
Australia came into the tie without top hope Nick Kyrgios, down with a virus and unable to play. Hewitt has not ruled out a singles appearance in Sunday’s reverse singles if necessary.
Novak Djokovic and Nenad Zimonjic left Serbia with work to do after going down in the Belgrade doubles to Kazaks Andrey Golubev and Aleksandr Nedovyesov 6-3, 7-6 (7-3), 7-5.
In Hanover, the Czech Republic took a 2-1 lead over Germany as Tomas Berdych and Radek Stepane beat Philipp Kohlschreiber and Philipp Petzschner 7-6 (9-7), 7-5, 6-4 while in Gdansk, host Poland earned a first point from victory by Lukasz Kubot and Marcin Matkowski over Argentines Carlos Berlocq and Renzo Olivo 6-3, 6-4, 6-4.
Croatia lead 2015 finalist Belgium in Liege 2-1 after Ivan Dodig and Franko Skugor combined for a 7-6 (7-5), 6-3, 6-1 win over David Goffin and Ruben Bemelmans.
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