Great Britain Davis Cup Tennis Team

In 1900, a team of British tennis players received a call for a match from rivals from the United States. Although in previous years, British visitors convincingly won on the American courts, this time the team of masters led by Dwight Davis took the upper hand and won the first Challenge Cup, which in the future received the unofficial first and then the official name of the Davis Cup .

In 1902, the Americans again managed to beat the British national team, despite the participation of Reginald and Lawrence Doherty in it, however, starting next year, the British took possession of the cup for four consecutive years. Three times during this time they beat the Americans and once the Belgians , before losing to the Australasian team . In 1912, the team of the British Isles interrupted in Melbourne a series of five consecutive victories of the Australasia team in the finals, having won the cup for the fifth time as well. In this meeting, the four-time Olympic medalist Charles Dixon and the Irish tennis player, the current champion of Australasia, James Cecil Park, played for the national team ^[1] . The following year, the British lost the title to the Americans, who were played by Maurice McLaughlin and Richard Norris Williams ^[2] .

A new series of successes for the UK team began in the 1930s, when Fred Perry and Bunny Austin played in its composition. If in 1931 the British still lost the round of the challenge to the French , who almost completely dominated world tennis at that moment, in 1933 they managed to interrupt a series of six French victories in the finals, and after that they themselves defended the title three times in a row - twice against USA (including after the victory "dry" in 1935) and once against Australia. Only in 1937, they, already in the absence of Perry, who went on to professional tennis, lost to the Americans, led by the future Grand Slam winner Don Budge ^[3] .

This final was the last for the British for the next 40 years. Only in 1978, they again managed to reach the final match after winning the European zone tournament and winning the interzonal match over Australia, but in the final they managed to take only one point against the US star team, where John Macinroy , Stan Smith and Bob Lutz played ^{[4 ]} .

In recent decades, the UK team is not among the favorites of the Davis Cup. From the moment the World Group was formed until 2014, the British spent only 12 seasons in it and gained only 4 victories. The rest of the time they played in the 1st, and sometimes even in the 2nd European-African group. They occupied the worst position in 1995 and 2010, when after losing in the first match of the 2nd European-African group, they had to play transitional matches with the teams of Monaco and Turkey for the right to stay in it the next year. Only in 2015, the British national team managed to win three consecutive victories in the World Group (that is, almost as many as in all the previous time in which it played) - over the teams of the USA, France and Australia - and after a 37-year break to get the right to participate in match for the main trophy of the tournament ^[5] .

Participation in the Davis Cup Finals

Team

• Seasons in the tournament - 105 (151–95)
• Seasons in the World Group - 15 (10-14)
• Championship titles - 10 (1903-1906, 1912, 1933-1936, 2015)
• Finals - 9 (1901, 1902, 1907, 1910, 1913, 1920, 1931, 1937, 1978)
• The longest series of victories - 10 (1933-1937, including victories over teams in the United States - three times, Australia - twice, Spain , Finland, Italy , Czechoslovakia and France, and four Davis Cups won)
• The biggest victory - 5: 0 in games, 15: 0 in sets, 90:16 in games (Great Britain -   Poland , 1925)
• The longest match - 15 hours 1 minute (   Morocco - United Kingdom 3: 2, 2003)
  • The greatest number of games in the match - 274 (UK -   Sweden 3: 2, 1963)
• The longest game is 3 hours 56 minutes (   Daniel Evans -   Dmitry Tursunov 4: 6, 7: 6 ⁵ , 4: 6, 7: 5, 4: 6, 2013)
  • The greatest number of games in the game - 95 (   Peter Curtis / Mark Cox -   Wilhelm Bungert / Christian Künke 8:10, 19:17, 11:13, 6: 3, 2: 6, 1969)
• The largest number of games in the set is 42 (   Mike Sangster / Bobby Wilson -   Jan-Eric Lundqvist / Ulf Schmidt 22:20 , 6: 4, 6: 3, 1963)

Players

• The greatest number of seasons in the team - 13 ( Greg Rusedski )
• Most matches - 34 ( Bobby Wilson )
• The largest number of games - 65 ( Mike Sangster , 43-22)
• The greatest number of victories in games is 45 ( Fred Perry , 45-7)
  • In singles - 36 ( Bunny Austin , 36-12)
  • In the doubles - 25 (Bobby Wilson, 25-8)
  • One pair - 11 (Mike Sangster / Bobby Wilson, 11—3)
• The youngest player is 17 years and 294 days ( Andy Murray , May 4, 2005)
• The oldest player is 48 years and 294 days ( Colin Gregory , May 17, 1952)

• Dominic Inglot
• Jamie Murray
• Andy Murray
• James ward
• Daniel Evans
• Kyle edmund

Captain - Leon Smith

World Group 2018 playoffs

World Group One Round , 2018

1/4 World Group Finals, 2017

• UK national tennis team in the Federation Cup

• Profile on the tournament website (eng.)
• Davis Cup on the UK Lawn Tennis Association website (Eng.)