Ten-time Davis Cup champions Great Britain have only lifted the trophy once since the 1930s – an Andy Murray-led triumph in 2015 – and fell to Japan at the first hurdle last year. <\/p>\n
Great Britain beat Poland 3-1 in September to retain their place in the top tier. <\/p>\n
They head to Oslo, where their first-round qualifier will be held from on February 6 and February 7, as the favourites to advance. The squad features two singles players ranked inside the top 30 in Draper and Cameron Norrie, British number three Jacob Fearnley, and a Grand Slam-winning doubles pairing in Lloyd Glasspool and Julian Cash. <\/p>\n
Hosts Norway have confirmed they will be without world number 12 Casper Ruud, whose wife gave birth to their first child at the weekend, leaving teenager Nicolai Budkov Kjaer, ranked 133rd, as their highest-ranked singles player. <\/p>\n
He will face Norrie in the second singles match with Draper taking on world number 329 Viktor Durasovic. <\/p>\n
But despite the gulf in rankings, Draper says Great Britain have to be prepared to “fight for every point” against an “amazing” Norway team.<\/p>\n
“They’ve got a young player in [Nicolai Budkov] Kjaer, who was number one in the world juniors and playing great tennis on the tour. He’ll be tough to beat \u2013 a young guy who’s got a lot to prove,” Draper said.<\/p>\n
“It’s going to be a great challenge for us all but I think we’re ready to embrace it and fight for every point.”<\/p>\n
The winner of this tie will face either Australia or Ecuador in a second round qualifier for a spot at November’s Davis Cup Finals in Italy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ten-time Davis Cup champions Great Britain have only lifted the trophy once since the 1930s – an Andy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":458465,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":{"0":"post-458464","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=458464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458464\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/458465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=458464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=458464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=458464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}