{"id":10010,"date":"2025-01-30T15:21:00","date_gmt":"2025-01-30T15:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/davis-cup-qualifying-2025-gb-tie-against-japan-great-opportunity-for-new-names-says-leon-smith\/"},"modified":"2025-01-30T15:21:00","modified_gmt":"2025-01-30T15:21:00","slug":"davis-cup-qualifying-2025-gb-tie-against-japan-great-opportunity-for-new-names-says-leon-smith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/davis-cup-qualifying-2025-gb-tie-against-japan-great-opportunity-for-new-names-says-leon-smith\/","title":{"rendered":"Davis Cup qualifying 2025: GB tie against Japan ‘great opportunity’ for new names, says Leon Smith"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Great Britain’s Davis Cup qualifying tie against Japan is a “great opportunity” for others in the absence of Jack Draper and Cameron Norrie, says captain Leon Smith.<\/b><\/p>\n

World number 77 Jacob Fearnley is the highest-ranked Briton in the squad in his first call-up to the team.<\/p>\n

Scotland’s Fearnley, who had a meteoric rise in 2024,<\/a> is joined by Billy Harris and doubles specialists Joe Salisbury and Neil Skupski.<\/p>\n

British number one Draper has opted to miss the tie to continue his rehabilitation from a hip injury, while Norrie withdrew<\/a> with illness.<\/p>\n

Norrie’s replacement, Jan Choinski, is also ill and has been replaced by world number 388 Giles Hussey.<\/p>\n

Henry Patten, who won the Australian Open men’s doubles title<\/a> with Harri Heliovaara, is also absent.<\/p>\n

Englishman Harris will face Japan’s world number 63 Yoshihito Nishioka in the first match at 04:00 GMT on Friday, before Fearnley faces 2014 US Open runner-up Kei Nishikori.<\/p>\n

“We would have loved to have had [Cam] here, but I think it’s a great opportunity for the others,” Smith said.<\/p>\n

“I have seen it before in the past in the ties when we haven’t had our top players there – it’s time for others to take that opportunity, win or lose, and learn from it.”<\/p>\n

Victory in Miki would see Smith’s team advance to the second round of qualifying in September, where they would face either Germany or Israel for a place in November’s eight-team Finals.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Great Britain’s Davis Cup qualifying tie against Japan is a “great opportunity” for others in the absence of Jack Draper and Cameron Norrie, says captain Leon Smith. World number 77 Jacob Fearnley is the highest-ranked Briton in the squad in his first call-up to the team. Scotland’s Fearnley, who had a meteoric rise in 2024, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10011,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10010"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10010\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10012,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10010\/revisions\/10012"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}