British Tennis - Lawn Tennis Association

What a day it was yesterday. I was so excited last night I couldn’t get to sleep until about 2am and I’m still buzzing even now. It was such an amazing night and it puts us in such a good position to go through our group and progress into the next round. It was without doubt, the best Fed Cup tie I’ve ever been part of. In all the Fed Cups that I’ve played in, there’ve been some real lows and some real highs but I think this is probably the first year that I’ve felt that we’ve had a complete team. We’ve also got an amazing captain so this is definitely the best week of Fed Cup that I’ve ever experienced.

In terms of the actual matches last night, Anne’s was very difficult. Her opponent was playing so well in parts, and showed off skill that suggests she should be ranked much higher than where she is. Then the pressure was really on me to get a result. I got through last night and dealt with the pressure through experience I think. I’ve been in that position before and I’ve been that person who doesn’t deal with it well enough, when you say to yourself ‘I have to win no matter what’ and it makes you all uptight. But the more that you’re in that situation the better you can cope with it. Yesterday I had to approach my match really professionally. I had the right tactics through all the video analysis so I knew what I had to do, it was just a matter of doing it and keeping myself in the right state of mind to be able to deliver.

So once my match was finished, we then had to get Laura and Heather pumped for their game.

Not that they needed any encouragement whatsoever. They came out so up for the challenge which was great to see. It was so nerve wracking watching them play the deciding match though. I’d much rather be playing than watching during those tense matches and so I kept offering to get the team coffees so I could have a break from it all! It was very tense, but wow, they did an amazing job and to get the win was unreal.

It was a mighty big team effort and today we have to do it all again against Israel. But we’re in high spirits, have some great support and even though the Israelis will have the home crowd rooting for them, we know that if we play our best we can get the result we want.