Today was the first day of the Davis Cup Playoff match between Great Britain and Uzbekistan, taking place at the Emirates Arena in Glasgow.

Before heading to the tennis I wandered into the City Centre to a cafe called Wanders where I had a lovely full breakfast and Americano.

I then walked to the Emirates Arena, during which time it decided to rain, quite hard at times!

I arrived in time to see the pre match entertainment which were, once again, The Red Hot Chilli Pipers. This time they'd added a couple of women dancers to their act, and they did their usual fantastic job of warming up and entertaining the crowd.

The first match pitted GB's Dan Evans against Uzbekistan's Denis Istomin. Dan is on his way back from his year's ban and is now ranked 222, while Istomin is the highest ranked player of the tour at 60.

A tight first set where Dan was the one most frequently knocking on the door of a break went all the way to the tie-break. Dan gained the crucial mini-break to secure the first set.

Dan continued the momentum at the start of the second set and broke for a 2-0 lead, but Istomin immediately broke back. Virtually every game for the rest of the set went to deuce when in the 9th game the Uzbek broke the Brit before serving out the second set to level the match.

Istomin kept the momentum going, breaking Dan in the first game of the 3rd set. The Uzbek put the pedal to the metal and twisted the knife as he quickly claimed the third set to love. However, Dan is nothing if not a fighte, so how will the fourth set go?...

Crucially, Dan held serve in the first game and had a break point in the second, indicating he was back in the match. The importance of the set was underlined by the fact that at the end of the seventh game, both players had used all their challenges. The set continued with serve until the 10th game when Dan broke to love to take the match into a final set.

Istomin gained the first advantage, breaking in the third game. In the next game Dan executed an exquisite cross court angled backhand to go 15-30 up and then at 30-40 Istomin double faulted to hand the break back. In Istomin's next service game Dan played brilliantly to break to love but then the Uzbek immediately broke back. It continued on serve until Istomin served at 5-6. At 0-30, he double faulted but then showed great nerve as he saved the 3 break points. Dan carved out a further 2 match points but Istomin Austin allowed nerve to save them. Then on the 6th Dan smashed a forehand winner to steal the victory 7-6(4) 4-6 0-6 6-4 7-5. The match took 4 hrs 7 mins of highly entertaining tennis for GB to take a 1-0 lead.

So to the second rubber - Cameron Norrie against Jurabek Karimov. A little over a year since turning pro, Cameron is now ranked at 70, while the 20 year old Karimov is 434.

Karimov chose to serve but three doubles handed the first game to Cameron. After a couple of loose points at the beginning of his service game, Cameron knuckled down to consolidate the break. A couple more doubles from the obviously nervous Karimov saw GB take a 3-0 lead. No further doubles were required as Cameron raced ahead to take the first set to love in 18 mins.

The match had yet to settle into a rhythm but Karimov bagged his first game at the start of the 2nd set, then his second as Cameron played a loose game. An immediate break back saw it go to 2-1. The fractured nature of the match continued as the players exchanged a couple more breaks. Cameron won the next 3 games to go 5-3 up, but lost his serve when 5-4 up. Then he immediately broke back for another change to serve out the second set. Which he did. That was a weird set!

The third set was a little more conventional, with Cameron breaking in the third game. Until Karimov broke back in the 8th. Cameron saved a set point in the tenth game. It eventually went to a tie-break, where Cameron had a match point but the Uzbek won 8-6.

Karimov quickly established an advantage in the 4th dry, breaking in the third game. Cameron's game was failing Hun as the unforced error count increased and he had to save a couple of double break points in the fifth. However, the double break came in the seventh game and Karimov took the set 6-2 to set up another fifth set.

The final set started the same way with Karimov breaking in the third game, a feat he repeated in the 5th. Cameron shone a dim light of hope when he immediately retrieved one break, but it was a final swan song as he was broken again and the Uzbek leveled the tie after 3 hrs 37mins, winning 0-6 5-7 7-6(6) 6-2 6-2.

Cameron should've sealed the match in straight sets but Karimov showed great resolve and fight back while the Brit's game collapsed.

It was now about 9:45 so I had a late supper at KFC before catching the bus back to the city centre and walking back to my accommodation.