{"id":287706,"date":"2026-02-08T19:10:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-08T19:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/287706\/"},"modified":"2026-02-08T19:10:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-08T19:10:10","slug":"doubles-drama-as-ireland-edged-out-in-davis-cup-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/287706\/","title":{"rendered":"Doubles drama as Ireland edged out in Davis Cup II"},"content":{"rendered":"

A narrow doubles defeat proved decisive as Ireland were edged out 3-2 by Syria in their Davis Cup II tie in University of Limerick this afternoon.<\/p>\n

With the teams tied at one win apiece overnight, the match was very much in the balance with much likely to hang on the opening doubles.<\/p>\n

Ireland opted for youth, giving Charlie Barry his debut alongside Conor Gannon, who had featured in the match against China in Dublin last September.<\/p>\n

Both finished their time at US Colleges relatively recently and for Barry it was a first taste of Davis Cup, and in his home city to boot.<\/p>\n

Nerves? What nerves? In front of another hugely supportive crowd – albeit slightly down on yesterday’s attendanc – they raced into a 5-0 lead and took the opening set 6-1.<\/p>\n

\"8
\nCharlie Barry and Conor Gannon were edged out in a dramatic doubles match<\/p>\n

Not unsurprisingly, Syria chose to pair their two experienced singles players in the doubles and they fought back.<\/p>\n

Gannon was broken in the fourth game of the second set and it turned out to be the final break of the match.<\/p>\n

Syria took the set 6-3, whilst the only two break points in the third set (and they were in fact match points) came when Ireland led 5-4 but they couldn\u2019t convert either and the decider went to a tie-break.<\/p>\n

Each team started that with a double fault but it was on serve thereafter before a superb return off a Gannon second serve tilted things the Syrians’ way, the visitors winning the tie-break 7-5.<\/p>\n

This mean that Michael Agwi had to topple Taym Al Azmeh in the first of the day\u2019s singles matches.<\/p>\n

But after two months of inactivity due to injury, Agwi put in another error-prone display as he fell to a 6-1 6-4 loss in barely over an hour, sealing the match for Syria.<\/p>\n

In the remaining dead-rubber match, Ireland’s Ammar Elamin defeated Yacoub Makzoume 6-3 6-2.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A narrow doubles defeat proved decisive as Ireland were edged out 3-2 by Syria in their Davis Cup…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":287707,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-287706","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/287707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}