Fery’s call up to replace the injured Fearnley came just 24 hours before he stepped out on court to make his Davis Cup debut.<\/p>\n
But there were no signs of nerves from the Briton as he produced a mature display against Pieczkowski, ranked 484 in the world.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t really think it [a debut] was going to be this early on in my career, and with my ranking,” Fery, whose mum flew in from London just in time for the match, said.<\/p>\n
“Very, very proud to be playing for Great Britain, and hopefully I can do it for many years to come.”<\/p>\n
Fery had the better of his 21-year-old opponent in the clutch moments, converting four of his 11 break points and minimising his errors, despite some signs of fatigue.<\/p>\n
Injury had caused him to drop out of the top 400 in the world but a monumental win over top-50 player Alexei Popyrin at Wimbledon and a first title on the Challenger tour – the rung below the ATP tour – helped him climb the rankings.<\/p>\n
“I’ve managed to play well, when I’ve been on court,” he said. “I’ve struggled with injuries the past year and a half, but this year has been good when I have been able to play.”<\/p>\n
Norrie had put Britain’s first point on the board earlier on Friday but was made to work for his victory over 19-year-old Berkieta, ranked 511 places below him.<\/p>\n
The British number two was immediately on the back foot, saving two break points in his opening service game before saving set points in a tense tie-break then sealing the set with a pinpoint serve.<\/p>\n
The 30-year-old then showed his experience as his opponent ran out of steam and an early break of serve was enough for Norrie to see out the win.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fery’s call up to replace the injured Fearnley came just 24 hours before he stepped out on court…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":133066,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-133220","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133220\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}