In the wake of the news that Bob Bryan had to pull out of the Davis Cup tie with Spain, Patrick McEnroe put a brave face on as he claimed that he believed the U.S. had a legitimate chance of upsetting Spain if they managed to win a point on the very first day against Rafa and Ferrer.
I don’t think it’s impossible. It’s definitely not impossible. We feel we have a chance. As I said, we’re the underdog, but we’re certainly not here strictly for our health. We’re here because we think we can win.
Saying that, we’ve been in tough situations before, in Seville in the final, 2004. It was a great team. Rafa was just coming up then. Moya was playing well. Ferrero. They had many great players. We went over there, we fought extremely hard. Andy played a great match against Rafa on the first day. He had a chance to go up two sets to one in that match.
I feel like if we can be in that kind of situation on the first day, we have a chance to win a match, anything can happen. So obviously it’s difficult, but we played a lot of away ties, particularly these guys here played in a lot of away ties. We’ve got that experience of sort of expecting the crowd to be loud, expecting lots of things to happen.
We’ll just try to go out there and play our best.
I do believe that they have a chance to win a match or maybe too (a dead rubber), but I doubt U.S. has a legitimate chance of beating Rafa or getting more than a match from the other 2 singles matches. But stranger things have happened in the past. Right now it looks 4-1 for Spain.