{"id":1632,"date":"2025-11-20T17:42:02","date_gmt":"2025-11-20T17:42:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/?p=1632"},"modified":"2025-11-20T17:42:02","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T17:42:02","slug":"davis-cup-finals-talks-planned-with-absent-stars-as-belgium-beat-france-in-opener","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/?p=1632","title":{"rendered":"Davis Cup Finals: Talks planned with absent stars as Belgium beat France in opener"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Great Britain are not involved this week after losing 3-2 to Japan in February&#8217;s first qualifying round.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But Leon Smith&#8217;s side gave themselves a chance of reaching next year&#8217;s season-closing event by beating Poland in an away eliminator in September.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Doubles specialists Julian Cash and Lloyd Glasspool, who have recently been crowned year-end world number ones, believe it is imperative that Britain demonstrate they can challenge the elite in 2026.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We&#8217;re an incredibly strong nation and sometimes we get a bit of hate because we have a Slam and the LTA is financially better off than a lot of the federations out there,&#8221; Cash told BBC Sport.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We have a lot of very good players, even below the Davis Cup level, and I think from the standard we&#8217;ve got \u2013 both singles and doubles \u2013 [the Finals] is where we deserve to be. But you have to earn that every year.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Britain last won the Davis Cup when the talismanic Andy Murray led them to glory in 2015, reaching the semi-finals again in 2019 before quarter-final appearances in 2021 and 2023.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">This year&#8217;s bid was hampered by an injury for British number one Jack Draper &#8211; who reached a career-high fourth in the world later in this season &#8211; which ruled him out of the Japan tie.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Injuries are a big part of it,&#8221; said Cash, &#8220;so we hope everyone can stay fit and if some of the other guys need to get called up then hopefully they can put their best performance out there.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Great Britain are not involved this week after losing 3-2 to Japan in February&#8217;s first qualifying round. But Leon Smith&#8217;s side gave themselves a chance of reaching next year&#8217;s season-closing event by beating Poland in an away eliminator in September. Doubles specialists Julian Cash and Lloyd Glasspool, who have recently been crowned year-end world number<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1633,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1632\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}